Crime, a constitutional issue

Crime and criminality are the greatest scourge in our country, impacting citizens’ sense of security and well-being, and increasing the costs and risks of business activity. Dealing with crime requires an effective police service, staffed by competent, honest and well-resourced officers executing a credible strategic plan for crime reduction. The effectiveness of the Police Service should be determined and assessed by an independent Police Service Commission (PolSC).

As Justice Judith Jones, the outgoing chairman of the PolSC has documented, the PolSC is ineffective by design. That design is outlined in the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago. It is for this reason that I and other members of the National Advisory Committee on Constitutional Reform (NACCR) have argued that: crime is a constitutional issue! Justice Jones, in her remarks in the 2023 Annual Report of the PolSC recently laid in Parliament, noted: (1) the Commission has no control over the strategic objectives of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service; (2) its monitoring function is, in accordance with performance appraisal practice, effectively limited to standards set by the Police Service (however low or incoherent those standards may be); (3) it does not have the power to monitor the operations of the Police Service as a whole; (4) it has no control over the recruitment pool of candidates for the positions of CoP and DCoP; and (5) the PolSC is understaffed to carry out even its existing functions.



In effect, then, the PolSC really does not decide the criteria for recruitment of the CoP, does not select the CoP, cannot monitor the performance of the Police Service, cannot independently verify whatever it is told by the CoP, and has no power to investigate anything. In light of these manifest managerial absurdities, is it any wonder that the PolSC is ineffective, the Police Service is ineffective, and therefore crime continues to escalate? Parenthetically, the TTPS and/or the government has resisted every attempt at reform, from the reports of Lee (1958), Darby (1964), Carr (1971), Bruce (1978), O’Dowd (1991), to Deosaran (2017)! It remains a colonial police force in structure, methods, attitudes and ­performance. There is another critical point which was not made by Chairman Jones.

It is that the 2006 amendment to the Constitution inserts the politicians in Parliament into the process of the appointment of the members of the Police Service Commission (Section 122(4) and (5)). This taints the independence of the PolSC. Moreover, this requirement for parliamentary approval does not apply to the other service commissions.

The NACCR “We The People” report addressed the service commissions and, especially the PolSC, frontally. Our report demanded that: “The role and functions of the Service Commissions should be redefined to enable them to develop efficiency and accountability and promote high standards and transparency of the Public Service and State agencies.” (We The People (WTP), paragraph 4.

118.) In respect of the PolSC, the Committee recommended that it be reconstituted as a “Protective Services Commission” encompassing the Police, Fire Service, Municipal Police and Prison Service, and it should have responsibility for the executive ranks in these services, therefore including the position of the Assistant CoP in the TTPS (WTP, 4.135).

The NACCR recommended that Parliament be removed from the process of appointment of the CoP and DCoP, leaving these in the hands of the independent PolSC (WTP, 4.140). However, the Prime Minister should have a veto over those appointments, though he must give reasons therefore to the PolSC.

The NACCR recommended that the PolSC (and other service commissions) have full responsibility for recruitment and appointment of the executive ranks, succession planning, performance management, monitoring and evaluation, and professional development and training (WTP, 5.164-5.167).

The PolSC would also have responsibility for establishing and enforcing a code of ethics and the disciplinary guidelines which the TTPS will follow (WTP, 5.168-5.169).

The role envisaged for the reformed service commissions is not inconsistent with delegation as provided for in Section 127(1) of the Constitution. The role of the PolSC and indeed the other service commissions would be akin to the role of a company’s board of directors who do not themselves manage, but establish policies, approve strategy, and provide oversight, guidance and discipline to executive management. In the NACCR’s conception, the PolSC is not some arm of the State whose purpose, as described by Lord Diplock, is merely to insulate the Police Service from the politicians.

It will, of course, do that. But it must do much more than that. It must oversee the human resource management of the TTPS, ensure the Commissioner of Police and the executive of the TTPS are competent to carry out their duties, and ensure they actually do so based on strategic plans and objectives in which the PolSC has ­significant input.

Our crime crisis will not be ­resolved by some “caped crusader”. It will be resolved by an effective Police Service which is competently led and managed. That, in turn, requires an ­independent PolSC which provides the required strategic oversight and sound human resource management practices, including dealing swiftly, when necessary, with poor ­performance and misconduct within the ­executive and ranks of the TTPS.

Former chairman Justice Judith Jones must be complimented for her excellent analysis and her candour. A fresh set of members of the Police Service Commission will now be appointed. However, unless there is constitutional reform, they, like all those before them, will be spinning top in mud and spectating as the crime crisis spins out of control.

—Terrence W Farrell.