CoP: I have never voted and never will while in office

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

We con­tin­ue our in­ter­view with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who cel­e­brat­ed his first year in of­fice last week. Dur­ing a sit-down in­ter­view at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, he told Guardian Me­dia that he is not po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned and that, in ad­di­tion to crime-fight­ing, his main fo­cus is in­creas­ing man­pow­er with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Why Can’t We Live Hap­pi­ly, In Uni­ty?

Ad­dress­ing the racial ten­sions that have sur­faced in re­cent times, Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro asked, “Why can’t we all live as one hap­py so­ci­ety?”

De­scrib­ing him­self as a “true Trinida­di­an” with East In­di­an, African and Span­ish her­itage, he plead­ed, “Every creed and race find an equal place.”

“We must have tol­er­ance of per­sons’ re­li­gion, eth­nic­i­ty and sta­tus. You can’t look down at any­one be­cause of your per­son­al dig­ni­ty.”

He said that while some­one may not find them­selves aligned with an­oth­er per­son, that was no rea­son for dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“It’s one way you look at per­sons who may find them­selves in a cer­tain type of em­ploy­ment that oth­ers may want to look down on. There are cer­tain types of em­ploy­ment that Trinida­di­ans would not want to do here. You have per­sons from out­side com­ing in­to our coun­try and do­ing that em­ploy­ment, and they are be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.”

“So I just want to make a plea to mem­bers of the pub­lic. Let us show that tol­er­ance to our fel­low man, whether they be of a dif­fer­ent eth­nic­i­ty, re­li­gion, creed, race or what­ev­er. Let us be tol­er­ant of our neigh­bours.”

Laugh­ing off claims that he was the Gov­ern­ment’s “blue-eyed boy” and had been spe­cial­ly se­lect­ed to do its bid­ding, as has been sug­gest­ed in the pub­lic do­main, Gue­var­ro main­tained that he is apo­lit­i­cal.

He swore, “I have nev­er vot­ed.”

“I have no in­ten­tion of vot­ing what­so­ev­er in my life­time, once I hold this po­si­tion.”

He re­vealed that the de­ci­sion, which was made years ago, stemmed from his as­sign­ment to the Spe­cial Branch.

“If gov­ern­ment was to change, I would have to serve the gov­ern­ment in pow­er.”

There­fore, he said, “I felt it was nec­es­sary at that time not to have any po­lit­i­cal lean­ings or al­le­giances to any­one in par­tic­u­lar, or any par­ty in par­tic­u­lar. And I main­tained that through­out my ca­reer. Apo­lit­i­cal.”

He re­called the ad­vice of for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Stephen Williams up­on his as­sump­tion of of­fice that the TTPS was an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, he re­it­er­at­ed, “You must un­der­stand that the gov­ern­ment of the day has the pol­i­cy-mak­ing au­thor­i­ty. So if the gov­ern­ment of the day’s pol­i­cy is one that is look­ing to re­duce homi­cides, re­duce home in­va­sions and re­duce ex­tor­tion, then the Po­lice Ser­vice align­ment should be placed in ac­cor­dance with the pol­i­cy di­rec­tion of the gov­ern­ment.”

He said com­mon sense dic­tat­ed that one could not be ad­ver­sar­i­al to pol­i­cy­mak­ers.

Sit­ting where he is now, Gue­var­ro joked that his pro­fes­sion­al life would be much eas­i­er if he were in­deed “favoured.”

“I wish I was in a po­si­tion where I got what I want,” he said.

“I do not see my­self as an ap­pointee of any par­tic­u­lar gov­ern­ment. It’s the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Both sides vot­ed for the ap­pointee.

“And if, with­in the first year, every­thing that is re­quired of the TTPS is be­ing done, and we are do­ing it in a right and prop­er way, then if the Prime Min­is­ter, the Pres­i­dent, the min­is­ter, the Op­po­si­tion Leader, the Chief Whip, whomev­er, wants to praise the TTPS for the re­sults they are see­ing, I will will­ing­ly ac­cept it.”

Look­ing Ahead As He Moves In­to His Sec­ond Year

Among his pri­or­i­ty goals as he moves in­to his sec­ond year in of­fice, Gue­var­ro said he is fo­cused on cor­rect­ing the hu­man re­source anom­aly with­in the TTPS that has ex­ist­ed since 1982.

As the de­mands of so­ci­ety have changed over the years, man­pow­er re­sources have not kept pace, with the Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­u­ing to op­er­ate with a sanc­tioned strength of 7,884 of­fi­cers.

Recog­nis­ing that since 1983 dozens of spe­cial­ist units, sec­tions and branch­es have been added to the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the TTPS, Gue­var­ro said, “No one sought to cor­rect that over the past 40 years.”

“Every time a prob­lem oc­curs ... kid­nap­pings be­came a prob­lem back in the late 1990s, so we opened an An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit. We didn’t re­cruit ad­di­tion­al po­lice of­fi­cers. We took po­lice of­fi­cers from oth­er units and cre­at­ed an An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit.”

“We then had the in­tro­duc­tion of com­put­ers, so we built an IT De­part­ment. We took po­lice of­fi­cers and opened this IT De­part­ment. Then we be­came IT-savvy and cy­ber­crime start­ed, so we had to have a Cy­ber­crime De­part­ment. Fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tions. You name it.

“Every sin­gle unit. Child pro­tec­tion. All of these units are re­cent units. Where did the staffing come from? From with­in the same sanc­tioned strength of 1980. And no one chose to cor­rect it.”

This acute short­age of per­son­nel, he claimed, has al­so led to bal­loon­ing over­time bills over the years.

Not­ing that there is nev­er a full staff strength of 7,884 of­fi­cers on du­ty at any giv­en time be­cause al­lowances must be made for of­fi­cers on va­ca­tion, sick leave and oth­er ab­sences, Gue­var­ro said, “We have an op­er­a­tional strength of be­tween 4,000 and 5,500 of­fi­cers at any giv­en time, which is woe­ful­ly in­suf­fi­cient.”

To over­come this is­sue, he said the sanc­tioned strength of the TTPS must be in­creased.

“So that we can have 7,800 of­fi­cers work­ing.”

To achieve that, he said, the TTPS would need ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,200 of­fi­cers on the pay­roll to main­tain an op­er­a­tional strength of 7,800 of­fi­cers at any giv­en time.

Ex­plor­ing ways to re­duce mount­ing costs and make the TTPS more sus­tain­able, Gue­var­ro said it was his in­ten­tion to es­tab­lish a cadre of spe­cial­ist of­fi­cers re­cruit­ed di­rect­ly from uni­ver­si­ties and trade schools.

Hav­ing to utilise of­fi­cers from the ex­ist­ing com­ple­ment to per­form du­ties in ar­eas in­clud­ing poly­graph test­ing, foren­sics, crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tions and bomb dis­pos­al, he said, “When these of­fi­cers go and do pro­mo­tion as­sess­ments, they then be­come pro­mot­ed out of the po­si­tion that they’re in.”

“This is some­thing that has per­me­at­ed the ranks of the Po­lice Ser­vice over the years, where we train per­sons for par­tic­u­lar du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and then they are pro­mot­ed out­side of that re­mit.”

The plan, he said, is to “re­cruit per­sons for par­tic­u­lar po­si­tions, so you will now hear crime scene of­fi­cer one or crime scene of­fi­cer two, but the main thing is that the per­son re­mains a crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tor.”

Pri­or­i­ty Goals

With an ex­ten­sive list of pri­or­i­ties be­fore him, Gue­var­ro high­light­ed sev­er­al ur­gent ar­eas he in­tends to ad­dress.

Among them is a plan to digi­tise the Po­lice Ser­vice by util­is­ing ex­ist­ing skill sets to save mon­ey.

An­oth­er is the rein­tro­duc­tion of ve­hi­cle re­pairs by po­lice of­fi­cers, which will co­in­cide with the in­ten­tion to re­cruit per­sons from trade schools who can as­sist in main­tain­ing TTPS ve­hi­cles.

He al­so wants to im­prove train­ing at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my by build­ing part­ner­ships with stake­hold­ers from the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da and France.

“We meet with them reg­u­lar­ly to fig­ure out how we can be­gin to build up­on the ca­pac­i­ty that cur­rent­ly ex­ists in the acad­e­my, and in so do­ing, we have had sev­er­al per­sons from oth­er Caribbean is­lands com­ing to Trinidad to re­ceive train­ing.”

“So I en­vi­sion that Trinidad and To­ba­go may soon be­come the hub of law en­force­ment train­ing in this part of the world.”

Gue­var­ro wel­comed in­creased part­ner­ships with for­eign law en­force­ment agen­cies, not­ing that such re­la­tion­ships al­ready ex­ist and that he in­tends to ex­pand them.

“We can’t do it alone. We can’t do it in si­los. We can’t do it one-on-one-on-one.”

Courts Keep­ing Back Pro­mo­tions

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing with the TTPS So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion last week, Gue­var­ro ac­knowl­edged con­cerns re­gard­ing the pro­mo­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers.

He said that while it was no fault of the cur­rent TTPS lead­er­ship, pro­mo­tions at all lev­els—from cor­po­ral to sergeant, sergeant to in­spec­tor, in­spec­tor to as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent, and all the way to as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er—were be­fore the courts.

He said while peo­ple may feel ag­griev­ed by the as­sess­ment process and seek le­gal re­dress, the prob­lem is that “these mat­ters have now been be­fore the court for over a year in some cas­es, over two years in some cas­es.”

If an of­fi­cer is not pro­mot­ed to the First Di­vi­sion by age 55, they lose the op­por­tu­ni­ty. As such, Gue­var­ro con­firmed, “I have lost a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cers over the past year since I’ve been sit­ting here be­cause the courts have failed to give a de­ci­sion on these pro­mo­tion mat­ters.”

He is hope­ful that the As­so­ci­a­tion’s ef­forts to en­gage the ju­di­cia­ry and cre­ate some “sort of trac­tion” will pro­duce pos­i­tive re­sults for the ser­vice.

Adding his voice to those call­ing for re­lief, he said, “The Po­lice Ser­vice is hurt­ing as a re­sult of these mat­ters.

“It hurts me and the or­gan­i­sa­tion that per­sons are be­ing al­lowed to just walk out at 55 with­out be­ing giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve with­in the First Di­vi­sion be­cause they didn’t get pro­mot­ed.”

Be Your Broth­er’s Keep­er

Im­plor­ing of­fi­cers to look out for one an­oth­er fol­low­ing two in­ci­dents last week in which po­lice of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly took their own lives, the Com­mis­sion­er said the de­vel­op­ments were re­gret­table.

Aware of the pres­sures fac­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, he ad­mit­ted, “The Po­lice Ser­vice as an en­tire­ty, as a unit, has been mov­ing al­most non-stop since 2020 with COVID.”

Cou­pled with du­ties span­ning Christ­mas, Car­ni­val, pub­lic hol­i­days and spe­cial events—and now three states of emer­gency—he said, “This is the long-term ef­fect.”

Re­veal­ing that he had spo­ken with Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ad­min­is­tra­tion) Ju­nior Ben­jamin about not re­strict­ing va­ca­tion leave de­spite the on­go­ing state of emer­gency, he ad­vised, “We are do­ing it on a leave man­age­ment ba­sis, case by case.”

He as­sured, “We are try­ing to man­age the leave of of­fi­cers in a man­ner that will still al­low them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get that much-need­ed rest and re­flec­tion.”

Re­fer­ring to the mur­der of Cpl Anus­ka Ever­s­ley at the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion, he said, “We recog­nise that men­tal health is in­deed an is­sue that needs to be ad­dressed, not on­ly in the TTPS but in all of law en­force­ment and even all of so­ci­ety.”

He plead­ed with the pub­lic to “ob­serve the be­hav­iours of your fam­i­ly and friends.”

“If you de­tect that any­thing is off, get as­sis­tance. Seek that help, that much-need­ed as­sis­tance. It could be coun­selling, it could be psy­chi­atric as­sis­tance.

“Ba­si­cal­ly, some­one just needs some­body to talk to. Reach out, have that con­ver­sa­tion with the per­son and try to de­ter­mine if that per­son needs greater in­ter­ven­tion, whether it be a po­lice of­fi­cer, prison of­fi­cer, mem­ber of the De­fence Force, whomev­er.

“Be­cause I can speak about law en­force­ment and say that we car­ry an even high­er or deep­er bur­den and the thresh­old is even greater than you would think.”

He said of­fi­cers car­ry out their du­ties as a ser­vice to so­ci­ety, of­ten with­out re­ceiv­ing the ap­pre­ci­a­tion they be­lieve they de­serve.

“Be­cause when you look at the neg­a­tive com­ments on so­cial me­dia, it tends to leave an al­most bit­ter taste in one’s mouth when you know that you, as a po­lice of­fi­cer, get up every sin­gle day and come to work and spend 12, some­times 24 hours in some cas­es, serv­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic, do­ing what needs to be done to keep them safe.

“And the re­ac­tion you get from mem­bers of the pub­lic via so­cial me­dia is by far al­ways neg­a­tive.”