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Policing strategy

May 16, 2009 Editorial

Over the past week, the top cops of the region gathered for the 24th conference of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police at the Pegasus.
The theme of their deliberations was, “Police Reform: An Imperative for Quality Service.”
One would have thought that an agreement on police strategy might have been seen as a threshold “imperative” before any “reform” could be initiated. But it was not to be.

From the news reports, the resulting discussions appeared to be scattered all over the place and we rather suspect that little substantive police reform will ensue from this meeting.
To take any road is to take no road. What makes the lack of focus on strategy even more worrisome is that on the opening day of the conference, remarks of President Bharrat Jagdeo and Caricom Assistant Secretary-General Dr Edward Greene posed the issue of strategy in very stark terms.

Dr. Greene is evidently “Caricom’s Ambassador of the Directorate of Human and Social Development”, whatever that means. Implicitly criticising the strategy promulgated by Caricom’s Council for National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE) – which focuses on closer collaboration by regional police forces on a wide array of security issues – he proposed that sustainable police reform, “rests with the construction and implementation of crime prevention strategies.”
This strategy would need “a new approach to partnership between the police and other stakeholders in the government service, private sector, civil society, the schools and youth movements and faith-based organisations.

“There ought also to be an alliance between the police and our research centres that provides analysis of trends and guidelines for behaviour change.”
Dr. Greene seems to be endorsing the police reform model tagged under the “community policing” rubric in which the police mandate is extended beyond the focus on fighting crime to include efforts that also address fear of crime, social and physical disorder and neighbourhood decay.
The model has been around for decades and we doubt that even at the most elementary level, the decentralisation both in command structure and decision-making that is required, can be implemented with our level of resources.

Does “Caricom’s Ambassador of the Directorate of Human and Social Development” really believe that our police officers, the majority of whom cannot pass a sixth grade examination, will be capable of deploying SARA (Scanning – Identifying and prioritizing problems, Analysis, Response and Assessment) – the “community policing” major conceptual vehicle for helping officers to think about problem solving in a structured and disciplined way?

While one may assert that the focus on down-playing the deployment of force is consistent with the “community policing” approach, emphasising “crime intelligence” is at the heart of another police reform model – “intelligence-led policing” that has taken the security world by storm recently.
Intelligence-led policing is seen as the very antithesis of the community-policing model.
One cannot but conclude that either the eminent “Caricom’s Ambassador of the Directorate of Human and Social Development” was just spouting a bit of empty theorising as most “desk-bound experts” are wont to do, or was taking the opportunity to take a pot shot at the GPF’s approach in taking out the gangs that were ravaging our country.

It is to President Jagdeo’s credit that he defended the use of force when the GPF come under fire from such elements that exist in Guyana. This approach is consistent with the Intelligence-led policing strategy.
Apart from the Caricom Ambassador of the Directorate of Human and Social Development’s posturing, the police chiefs could have picked up the strands of the debate on policing strategy – which also includes the “problem oriented policing” (POP) model – which we are sure they are thoroughly familiar with. At least they would have been singing from the same hymnbook.

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