What’s the plan for crime? Pt I
At the final post-Cabinet news conference for 2011, Attorney General Anand Ramlogan expressed personal disappointment with the recent increase in murders to 15 since the end of the State of Emergency (SOE), eight of which occurred during the Christmas holiday weekend.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar, in a media interview in late December renewed the Government’s resolve to keep criminals on the run in 2012. The Chamber wholeheartedly concurs that this be one of the country’s New Year’s resolutions.
The Chamber, like AG Ramlogan, is very anxious to hear from Police Commissioner Dwayne Gibbs, who has had the benefit of a year to settle into the job. It was expected that during this time he would have been able to bring fresh ideas to bear on the solution to crime in terms of some workable plan to ensure that the homicide rate, in particular, was kept to a minimum.
In media statements regarding the SOE and lifting the curfew, the Chamber stated that they were merely tools in the crime fighting arsenal, and should not to be viewed as solutions. As we re-iterated in our final media release for 2011, we expected a plan from law enforcement authorities and the Minister of National Security.
While the reported 25% reduction in serious crime for 2011 is noteworthy, in our view, the spike of more than 40% for December alone, has seriously eroded whatever gains were achieved during the SOE. Clearly, they were not sustainable without the SOE!
With the appointment, in 2011, of the highly experienced and respected former Independent Senator Ramesh Deosaran to be Chairman of the Police Service Commission, the Chamber expected that, at long last, the machinery presented by the Constitution for getting value for money from the Police Commissioner and his deputies, would have elicited some plan, especially having regard to the promise with which the PSC’s Chairman assumed office, committing to critically examine what Commissioner Gibbs and his deputies had achieved and the impact of the PSC’s mandate on such achievement. In the Chamber’s opinion, the impact of the Gibbs’ team on crime, with or without the SOE, at the very least, deserves some microscopic interrogation, benchmarking and target setting by the PSC with stringent performance reviews throughout the year.
The Chamber recently attended a luncheon hosted by the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) and the Commissioner, for the purpose of addressing all these expectations. Firstly, Dr. Gibbs placed reliance on the statistics for all crime, since the proclamation of the State of Emergency on August 21, 2011, in order to respond to popular concerns. Commissioner Gibbs contended that that the statistics conclude, that all serious crime was reduced by 50% over that period. He readily admitted, however, that there will be spikes in the trend, similar to that over the Christmas holiday weekend.
The Commissioner is not satisfied with this position though, and promised that he and his teams would work harder to better the statistics. In the Chamber’s opinion, this presents a golden opportunity for the PSC to benchmark, target and measure the performance of Dr. Gibbs and his deputies in the discharge of its Constitutional responsibilities.
Secondly, Commissioner Gibbs indicated that the action plan comprises the universal introduction to all Divisions of the 21st Century Policing Initiative, which aims to improve policing and conspicuity of officers in public places. His experience with its introduction in the Western Division, disclosed a 30-35% reduction in crime generally, a welcome change in the attitudes of patrol officers to ones of care and concern, and improved response times, where, in the case of reports of breaking and entering premises, offenders have been actually caught.
Thirdly, the Police Commissioner announced that promotions within the ranks were up to date and he and his deputies were continuing to work on capacity building, training, more useful deployment, provision of adequate resources and better quality recruitment, in order to achieve authorised strength for the Service and improvement in lifestyle for all officers, through the 21st Century Initiative, as the reservoir from which to draw all this intelligence and experience. The Initiative is targeted to become operational in every Division by the end of this year.
Fourthly, Commissioner Gibbs has devised a traffic plan to address the rate of death on our roads, which closely matches that of homicides. It involves a 360-degree change in the attitudes and habits of all road users. He admits that this is a hard nut to crack, but plans implementation in the current quarter. This is a performance indicator of which the PSC should take note!
(Part II will appear next week)
