ROSEMARIE SANT
The crime detection rate in T&T has been put at an abysmally low 8.6 per cent for the period August 2015 to March 2016—way below the 35 per cent target Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams set for the Police Service. This is according to official police data covering the period up to April this year.
While head of the Police Service Social and Welfare Association Michael Seales blames the low detection rate on citizens’ failure to come forward, president of the Downtown Owners and Merchants Association (DOMA) Gregory Aboud believes the police are failing in their duty.
Aboud, who last week called out Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley,head of the National Security Council, on the continuing crime scourge, told the T&T Guardian: “The only real way to protect lives is to find the murderers and arrest them. That is the only way to stop them.”
Aboud said police cannot blame citizens for their failure to solve crimes because according to him, “there are many instances where people go to police stations to make reports and by the time they get back to their homes the person who they make the report about already knows.”
Seales said the Commissioner’s broad approach was for a significant increase in the detection rate for murders of 35 per cent by the end of the year. Divisional heads, he said, were given “collective targets with respect to detection starting at ten per cent and increasing every quarter. But the ultimate aim was to achieve a 35 per cent increase in detection by year’s end.”
He said there are repercussions for divisional heads who fail to meet set targets.
“It is reflected in their performance appraisal and if they are not performing they will not get promotions or increases in salaries,” Seales said.
He described it as “a fair system,” which gives the divisional head “the opportunity to bring his or her performance up to scratch within a set time frame. If there is no improvement the commissioner can then re-assign the person.”
Division heads must account
Former head of the Police Service Commission, Professor Ramesh Deosaran, said: “The Police Service as a whole do have key indicators, some of which are reduction in serious crime, reduction in serious traffic accidents and increase in the detection rate.”
Deosaran said the Commissioner now has “constitutional powers to manage the service in terms of available human and physical resources” and with the exception of deputy commissioners, “has complete power to transfer, appoint, promote, discipline after appropriate steps are taken with respect to staff reports and due process.”
“The Commissioner should direct his division heads to perform according to these established criteria and the appropriate action taken for success or failure,” he said.
But the onus is also on the Police Service Commission to monitor the extent to which the Commissioner is exercising his powers and responsibilities, as well as monitor, measure and evaluate the performance of the three deputy commissioners. Failure to perform should be “noted, remedied or subjected to disciplinary action”, Deosaran said.
He said detection rates have not been meeting stipulated targets, and require urgent attention by the Commissioner, the Police Service Commission and Government, since “to leave it idle with public complaints and criminals running free cannot be tolerated in a civilised society. This is a key criterion upon which to assess performance.”
Seales argued that the low detection rate had a lot to do with “the lack of public interest in helping the police.”
“You need the witnesses to a crime to say what they saw,” he said.
Noting the growing fear among the citizenry about the growing trend of crime, Seales said: “We have to bite the bullet. What we reaping is because everybody scared.”
He added that “every citizen must play an active role” in the battle to reduce rising crime levels.
Seales admitted that there is a “lack of trust” in the police and blamed this partially on “some in the media who advise people not to trust the police because they’re corrupt.”
He said constantly putting that kind of information in people’s heads “impacts on the psyche of the people and impacts their relationship with the police.”
But one young man who witnessed the murder of a relative rubbished Seale’s argument.
He said he vividly recalls the face of his cousin’s killer but knows that “going to the police to report the crime in the Besson Street area is certain death for me.”
The man said he continues to see the face of the killer even with his eyes closed in bed at night, but has to live with it to protect himself and his family.
Deosaran said public policing depends on community support and participation.
He admitted that this has become “a serious weakness, an unfortunate gap” and fuller community support and confidence in the police are “definite ways to help improve crime reduction, increased detection rates and successful prosecutions.”