Creating trust in the police

Debbie Jacob

LET’S NOT beat around the bush. If we’re serious about addressing crime we must change the public’s image of the police. We need someone to help police develop the interpersonal skills necessary to deal with the public and shape police into a force that the public respects and trusts. Without these two values, the police will never get the public support to fight crime more efficiently.

I know the perfect person to handle that job: Sgt Khemraj Sahadeo. Many people know he was in the Maximum Security Prison (MSP) from November 1, 2011- November 24, 2023 with six other police officers, over a police exercise that ended up with all of the officers on murder charges, or know about his subsequent release after the officers won their case in court.

But the police and I know what they have in Sahadeo. When he was on my MSP debate team, I witnessed how the whole mood changed when he entered a room. He has an unexplainable, undeniable, disarming and commanding presence.

In prison, Sahadeo earned the respect of prison officers and inmates – many of whom he had arrested. He won nearly everyone over by listening to their issues, helping them with their cases and motivating them to change. He served as the model for that change.

Twelve years in prison gave him the knowledge and empathy to understand the men police arrest. Many of our police officers and criminals come from the same impoverished areas, but they lose sight of that common ground, and their paths take different turns. We need to understand why this happens, repair that rift and create trust in the police. Sahadeo can handle that.

When he was released from prison, he put his prison experience in perspective.

“You can become a bitter person or a better person. Now, I’m understanding the people who commit crimes and the people who are victims.”

He knows the importance of education and family. In prison, he participated in self-esteem programmes, music and academic classes and worked on MSP’s Rise Radio. During the pandemic, he taught adult literacy classes. He’s a reader and believes in the power of reading.

In our prison debates, he presented compelling arguments and earned one of seven positions on the all-star prison debate team formed from all ten prisons in 2017-2019.

He understands what boys go through growing up in single-parent homes and what it takes to make it in such an environment. In his case, his mother died of a stroke when she was 38, and his father raised five children.

He worked in cane fields and as a security guard; in a grocery store and in the police service.

“My first job, in a grocery store in Princes Town, taught me how service makes people happy. Service to man is like service to God. I wanted to help people,” he said when I interviewed him after his release from prison. He values fairness, independence and self-sufficiency. He motivates everyone around him and instils confidence and self-esteem in people.

In my interview, Sahadeo said the three leading causes for crime are poverty, broken homes and illiteracy.

“A person doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to be a criminal. We need to face the causes of crime. Teenagers go with the people who encourage them. If the father is missing, they look for a hero – someone to care about them.”

That is why young men turn to gang leaders.

Sahadeo always said saving our youth should be the country’s top priority.

“We must save the youth. If we don’t, crime will get ten times worse,” he warned.

He believes people can have confidence in the police service and said, “There are instances of wrongdoing, and the negative part of the police plays out in the media, but there are good, conscientious police.”

The biggest issue in this country is not crime. It’s our inability to admit we need to take bold new approaches to solving crime – one that includes empathy, relevant education and inclusion rather than upholding the remnants of that colonial policy of divide and rule. The us-against-them mentality is not working. Addressing the socio-economic and cultural divide between us is important.

Sahadeo’s life experiences, his gift for dealing with people and understanding both sides of an issue make him an important human resource in the police service. He should train police officers to deal with the public, because we really can’t achieve any crime-fighting milestone unless we deal with public cynicism.