To Protect and Serve

Over the last few years, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service has come in for a lot of criticism. As daily life in Trinidad and Tobago now revolves around a backdrop of murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape, sodomy and the like, it is easy to see why. The masses complain that the police service isn't fit for the purpose and that as a whole, it is incompetent, corrupt and generally, makes a mockery of its motto ''to protect and serve.'' What many fail to acknowledge however, is that the police service is but a microcosm of society, and many of its problems are a reflection of the general ''doh-care'' attitudes of the society at large.

Policing in the 21^st century is an enormous challenge; great minds are therefore needed to meet this challenge head on. This is not a concept that people living in Trinidad and Tobago seemed to have grasped. Basic mathematics tells us that the whole can only be equal to the sum of its parts. How good a police service can you expect to have when society dictates that the person working in KFC must have more CXC passes that the police constable investigating your son's shooting? I remember having a conversation with a friend shortly after joining the Metropolitan Police here in London. I remember him saying words to the effect of, ''a bright boy like you and that is what you want to do?'' I was stunned by his comment and remember thinking that if something serious should happen to someone in his family, wouldn't he feel more at ease knowing that ''a bright boy like me'' was on the case? My critics will argue that even here in the UK there are no academic restrictions on those wishing to apply to become police officers. While this is indeed the case, I can argue that over fifty percent of the recruits in my batch at the academy were university graduates. In fact, ''bright boys like me'' who had no degree, were in a minority.

The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service still also employs the most antiquated methods of selection and recruitment. They place height restrictions on prospective candidates, and successful applicants must neither be ''flat-footed'' nor have ''rotten teeth.'' Where is it written that ''flat-footed'' people aren't able to be good police men and women? Have there been scientific studies which show that taller people and/or people with perfect teeth make better police officers? I didn't think so. Why do they then persist with these ancient practices? Why do we as citizens allow it? What nonsense, what stupidity!! The people who are best able to do the job should be employed, irrespective of physical attributes. It is that simple.

Would New Yorkers allow for an NYPD baseball team to criss-cross America playing in the major professional leagues? Would a normally liberal-minded London stand for Scotland Yard's finest travelling up and down good ''Ole Blighty'' playing no less than thirty-eight Premiership games a season? And all this at great expense to the public purse?? But we Trinidadians are an accommodating lot, aren't we? So, as the bodies pile up along the East-West corridor, and as Port of Spain is gripped in the midst of a bombing spree, police officers travel all over the country in search of sporting accolades. These various police teams don't just have the occasional kick-a-bout; they compete at the highest level of their respective domains and are therefore required to maintain professional levels of sporting commitment and training. The idiocy does not stop there though. Fully qualified police officers are being employed as carpenters, mechanics, plumbers and painters throughout the entire Trinidad and Tobago Police Service. Hundreds of men and women sworn to maintain law and order are busy fixing cars at Traffic HQ in Sea Lots or painting the Barracks in St. James.

Aren't these officers supposed to be protecting your family and mine from the criminal element? Exactly how are they going to do that dressed in painters overalls or in netball skirts and knickers? Is it such a wonder then, that as you're being held at gunpoint and your brand new Mitsubishi Lancer is stolen, there are no police officers to come to your assistance? Why is it such a surprise that as your husband is being bundled into a car and the kidnappers make good their getaway, your repeated calls to the police generate no response? The police are all either in the Velodrome playing against Joe Public or have all gone home after a hard day's painting!! To explore the extent of this foolishness, imagine for a minute that teachers had adopted the same principles. Trinidad would have people hired as qualified teachers actually doing no teaching at all. Teachers trained at either Valsayn or Corinth would end up repairing broken desks, unblocking clogged toilets and touching up shoddy school buildings with licks of paint. Others still will be exempt from the more mundane duties of educating and be expected to be prolific goal-scorers as Teachers FC take on San Juan Jabloteh in the SPL. And what about casualty nurses playing hockey while patients die at Port of Spain General? We wouldn't stand for it...or would we?

You cannot slap someone in the face with your left hand and then in the same breath, realistically expect them to shake your right. The police service complain that in most crime-ridden communities they receive little or no public support. What do the police expect? For it is in these same communities where the people feel most terrorised by the police. Horror stories involving police-issue size tens are rife and ''death by police'' is not uncommon. Police officers are not above the law. They are governed by the same set of laws like everyday citizens. Too often their wanton abuse and in some cases, murder, goes unchallenged by us citizens and unpunished in law. We have recently seen a police officer rightfully found guilty for shooting dead a man in cold blood. What is disturbing about this issue is not the fact that he did what he did, but the fact that he thought he could have gotten away with it. The notion of self-defence is clear. Where there is an honest held belief that one's life or that of another is in imminent danger, then the person concerned can use as much force as is necessary to reduce or nullify that threat. It does not say that when a man suspected of a crime is running away, he can be shot in the back. It makes no mention of the fact that because you are 'babylon' you can shoot whom you want, when you want. Nor does the law make provisions for the kicking and beating of people into submission for failing to comply with police instructions.

Half baked measures are promised and new specialist units and initiatives are formed at the drop of a hat. We have recently seen the launch of the new '555' system. These people make me laugh yes. They don't react when you call the emergency '999' number, but we are made to believe that by calling this new non-emergency number, things are going to be better. Who is going to answer the call? Isn't it going to be the same person who laughed when you called '999' and told him that your house had been broken into? Isn't it going to be the same person who told you that there was no vehicle to attend your address that morning? And who is going to come to your help anyway? Aren't they going to be the same officers who attended to report the burglary four days after it happened? The same goes for these new hi-tech anti-crime units. Aren't they going to be staffed by the same morons who landed the helicopter in the middle of a crime-scene and blew away all the evidence from the bomb blast? They can reconfigure, rename and restructure all they want. Unless urgent and serious reform is carried out, we will continue to see the ''same old dutty khaki pants'' day in, day out.

prophet