PolSC to give its rating on CoP’s performance soon

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) is ex­pect­ing to give its re­port on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro soon, says chair­man Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Wal­lace said “all ques­tions” per­tain­ing to the com­mis­sion’s rat­ing of Gue­var­ro would be an­swered in a me­dia re­lease but did not say when the re­lease will be is­sued.

Gue­var­ro cel­e­brat­ed his first an­niver­sary on June 18. He was ap­point­ed as CoP on June 17, with his role tak­ing ef­fect from June 18, 2025. The ap­point­ment fol­lowed the com­ple­tion of a re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion process con­duct­ed by the PSC that be­gan in April 2024.

The PolSC gave Gue­var­ro a 12-month pro­ba­tion pe­ri­od, at the end of which he was to be as­sessed and once ap­proved, he will be con­firmed un­til his re­tire­ment at age 60. The CoP is now 50. Gue­var­ro, un­like his pre­de­ces­sors Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Gary Grif­fith, was pro­mot­ed to the rank of CoP and not ap­point­ed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the ma­jor is­sue on which to judge Gue­var­ro’s per­for­mance is the pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice.

“I would not want to give a grade for the com­mis­sion­er. I think that is for the pub­lic to do so. I re­call when I left as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence was al­most 60 per cent. How the pub­lic mea­sures the per­for­mance and the grade of a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice is the im­por­tant thing, not the view of the prime min­is­ter, not the view of pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers, not the view of politi­cians, but the view of the pub­lic.”

Al­so con­tact­ed, for­mer PolSC mem­ber Court­ney Mc Nish said he agreed with Grif­fith.

“I’m not sure what the cur­rent key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors are, so I don’t know what’s mea­sured. I agree with the for­mer CoP that a key mea­sur­able would be pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence. How­ev­er, giv­en our cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment, I al­so hold the view that strate­gic, ob­jec­tive and in­de­pen­dent de­ci­sion mak­ing will be just as im­por­tant.”

A month af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice, Gue­var­ro ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment to call an SoE to ad­dress what he said was cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion of a crime syn­di­cate op­er­at­ing from with­in the prison sys­tem, who were plan­ning co­or­di­nat­ed at­tacks on Gov­ern­ment, ju­di­cial and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials. This led to in­mates at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca be­ing re­lo­cat­ed to Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay, which were lat­er legal­ly con­vert­ed to pris­ons.