Criminologist, top cops: Political will needed to fix police service

Radical reform is necessary to transform the police service to serve a democracy as from its inception it served the colonial masters.

That's the view of criminologist Darius Figuera, a retired UWI lecturer, as he spoke to Sunday Newsday as part of a series looking at improving the efficiency of the police service and purging it of corrupt elements.

Figuera said the fundamental problem with the service is that TT became independent from the British on August 31, 1962 but the service failed to evolve into one to operate in the new democracy. He blamed politicians for keeping it that way to serve their own agendas.

"A colonial police service was designed to serve the colonial massa not the people. So a colonial police service cannot operate in a democracy," he said, and agreed TT had to go back to the drawing board to build a service for the people.

Figuera recalled that seven years after TT became independent there were mass demonstrations on the streets, followed by the 1970 Black Power uprising and the police force, as it was then called, had to quell it by force.

"The police service was never given the opportunity to evolve into a democratic institution, policing a democratic society, they were always there to put the big stick," he said.

In the ensuing five decades, Figuera said democracy was maturing in many other areas but the police "continued to be defined as a colonial policing service" which cannot resist the threat of transnational organised crime.

"We have insisted that it remains a colonial policing service for political reasons but a colonial policing service cannot evolve to face the threat from the society and the transnational threat.

"So, therefore we want them to do things that we have never allowed them to evolve in order to do. We are giving them tasks but we are not allowing them to evolve to effectively execute those tasks," he said.

To emphasise his point, Figuera referred to the archaic system of promotion which is mounted primarily on seniority and the bureaucratic system of discipline which drags on for years without completion in many instances.

"The structure remains colonial, the whole system of promotion remains colonial, the whole system of discipline has failed, it remains colonial, the command and control systems remains colonial and it cannot face up to the threat posed to the society that targeted it to compromise it. It cannot even defend itself. And then what we do now in times of crisis, we blame the police," he said.

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith, a former politician and soldier who was appointed to the role in August 2018, agrees that the inability to fire corrupt, inefficient officers was strangling the service.

He is optimistic that politicians would approve legislation to compel officers to face mandatory drug and polygraph tests and sign five-year contracts after graduating.

With just nine months left in his three-year contract, Griffith said he would have to decide whether he wants to continue even though his employer, the Police Service Commission, has awarded him top marks for his performance.

Griffith said he discovered in the past that every officer, regardless of their performance, got high marks on their appraisals and described the previous system of promotion as "a joke."

He opined that senior officers were reluctant to penalise non-performing officers because of the threat of lawsuits but that does not deter him. He said he has faced a slew of lawsuits over promotion and transfers and in many instances the officers did not succeed.

Asked whether he had the right team to effect the transformation of the service, Griffith said with the changing of the old guard, his team has grown in strength.

He said some of the senior officers who retired had actually "retired while on active duty" and it was difficult to teach old dogs new tricks as the service adopted more technological tools to combat crime.

There is a "very powerful group of middle managers", he said, who would soon assume positions in the executive such as assistant commissioners and deputy commissioners.

"Some of the fellas are dynamic, proactive and want to get things done. There is a sense of pride. That is who I want to work on. When the middle management takes over the 11 ACPs and three DCPs, I would have a powerful team."

Griffith said that would give him some comfort and confidence in not having to micro-manage divisions and stations, as he could delegate responsibility because he could trust the commanders to get the job done.

He said unlike the Defence Force, police officers cannot leap-frog over ranks and the service had lost good officers who refused to wait 20 years to be promoted.

"The concept of seniority to be promoted has to end. It does not add value to the organisation. I have few sergeants and inspectors I wish they were ACPs," the CoP said.

His predecessor, Stephen Williams, who acted as CoP for six years, agreed that aspects of colonialism had shaped the way police operate.

Williams said the colonial dimension created a reactionary model of policing which was station-oriented but that began to change in 2003 when the policing for the people initiative was launched following the recruitment of Prof Stephen Mastrofski, from George Mason University in the US.

He said issues of corruption among officers, businessmen paying bribes for gun licences and people within the organisation seeking to undermine it, have always been present in the service.

"Corruption is like a cancer, it does not only affect the police service, it affects the society, it affects the image of the country. It extends to how the country is seen globally," he said.

Williams said he witnessed low moral even among the police management as the "cancer of corruption" infected the ranks.

He said he purposely took a position to avoid advances from senior officers who accepted bribes to fast-track gun licences for businesspeople and he was "beaten like a road march" for his stance. He said businessmen were contributing to police corruption and he could not condone it.

He said while there was information about police accepting bribes for gun licences, getting evidence was a challenge.

On the complaint by Griffith that there were Trojan horses in the service, Williams said there will always people seeking to undermine the leadership. He said Griffith came in believing that he can turn the organisation around because the people in the organisation did not have the capacity to turn it around.

Asked whether he believes the service would one day become a beacon of pride, to protect and serve the country, Williams said such change must include officers, internally and externally, all politicians and other key agencies.

"I am hoping that day will come. Right now I am not seeing the things being done to realise that in the near future. It takes a united effort to drive that change," he said.

Another key factor was ensuring the police had the resources to get the job done. He said any modern day police service must be mobile and have enough money to keep the fleet on the road.

Corruption steps in when a businessman helps to fix a vehicle and then wants something in return, he said. Williams also believes there is a cadre of officers – exposed to high levels of training funded by the state – who can provide the leadership to drive the service forward.

Figuera was also optimistic that things can change and improve if the necessary reforms are approved by Parliament.

"It does not mean we have to build over, but what we have to do is decolonise the police service. We have system or promotions that goes nowhere, a series of court cases over promotions, year in, year out. You have a system of discipline where people are put on suspension and the suspension drags on for years because the whole structure has collapsed.

"Therefore we don't have the tools to police itself internally for the corruption. So what we have done, every time there is a crisis in society we try to patch it, to graft it, to patch it but when you do that it can't evolve," he said.

Asked whether he believed politicians had purposely avoided police reform by not implementing the myriad of recommendations from reports which examined the organisation over the last 50 years, Figuera said it was clear crime had been politicised.

"The ruling politicians and the opposition politicians are paranoid that if you are going to tinker with the police service and there is a crime wave they now have to take the blame. So all they want for their five-year term is business as usual. That is the pressure they put upon the police service."