How easy can it be for the police to do their work when many citizens consider them criminals themselves, thanks to allegations from places least expected, to say nothing of the still unresolved IMPACS? Besides, the police force is woefully underequipped and undertrained to fight current crime!
An article recently published in the UK Guardian observes that “the social system is failing when there are more murders but fewer officers trying to solve them.” The reference by the paper’s columnist Kate London, a former police officer, referred to the statistic that since 2008 the number of officers investigating homicides in London had dropped by 25 percent. Also, that since 2010 the Metropolitan Police’s annual budget had been cut by some 20 percent.
Cuts have consequences, the Guardian’s columnist reminded readers. Homicide teams must be properly equipped. Among other things, “they need firearms officers, administrative support and intelligence that comes from neighbourhood policing, support staff and community support officers.”
Cuts also result in impossible workloads and associated stress, with officers forced to report sick. Some resign after a couple years. Another major fall-out: falling detection rates for murder. Still referring to the Met, the Guardian’s columnist writes: “Police have long been frustrated that they can’t deliver a better service or convince the public that the crisis in policing is real and important and that they are not just crying wolf.”
Finally this from the Guardian’s columnist: “A 2017 report from the National Crime Agency shows some street gangs evolving into more serious criminal enterprises: networked, technologically savvy, internationalized, more predatory and sometimes more violent.” What is true about the reported state of London’s Metropolitan police is equally true, mutatis mutandis, of what confronts the long-suffering Royal Saint Lucia Police Force—only with more dire consequences. There was hardly a time when working conditions did not fall far below what our sole protectors of Saint Lucian lives and property deserve. Still we expect from the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, as bereft and neglected as it has been going back decades, the level of performance associated with the best law and order TV shows. It is a dangerous ignorance we demonstrate when persistently we dump on our local police for their inability to solve crime in our communities, reported and otherwise. When the exaggerations we see on American TV are daily shoved in their faces.
If only the police were free to speak out. Even sadder is that those who profess to speak for them are more often than not the first to lay on their over-burdened shoulders the load that should be theirs alone to carry. Witness: at the time of the Oliver Gobat murder the police secured from the press our collective assurance not to feature information still to be officially confirmed. For one, the identity of the particular homicide victim. The last thing the police expected was that the day’s prime minister would attend a memorial for Oliver Gobat when it had not yet been officially determined that the scant remains picked at the scene of the crime were related to the young hotelier. As if further to make the work of the under-equipped police more difficult, the prime minister had assured Oliver’s grieving parents and relatives that the police were on top of things and that an arrest was “imminent.” Months later, amidst complaints by Oliver’s grief-stricken and frustrated parents to the U.K. press, the prime minister confirmed to a leading foreign newspaper that “we have a corruption problem with our police”—with no supportive evidence!
In January 2003, with crime figures rocketing, and after a “nationwide survey of fear of crime and community policing in Saint Lucia,” the government formally launched a National Crime Commission. Following is a statement on the occasion by Professor Ramesh Deosoran: “Policing should not be merely law enforcement on the end side of the crime problem. The engagement should also be focused much more heavily on prevention. What has been lacking in the Caribbean is a scientific approach to policing. We have little or no measures to establish whether the police have been effective or not.”
Still the professor was able to discern the local crime rate was not only constant but it was also increasing, indication enough, it would appear, that the police had not been as effective as expected. The professor seemed to suggest that when it came to the police, taxpayers were not getting their money’s worth.
“The police should explain why the detection rate is not as it could be,” said Deosaran, since in recent times the force had received “more equipment and even more manpower and financial support.” His survey had revealed “70 percent of Saint Lucians were dissatisfied with the performance of the police.” Moreover, that even when the people took their complaints to the police stations “they were far from satisfied.” Deosaran recommended “these questions must be properly dealt with if you mean business in the face of this serious problem of crime.” He had been amazed, he said, that when asked to what extent they felt crime was a serious problem “99 percent of them said it was.”
He went on to say, without stating whom he was actually addressing, his civilian audience or the attendant ministers of government: “You should therefore begin to see that it is nothing personal. We are going to ride through this problem on the basis of science and methodology, using in the first instance the result from this survey.”
Then Prime Minister Kenny Anthony’s turn to express his concern about “public confidence in the police.” Citing Deosoran’s report, he said: “The survey reveals that almost 70 percent of the Saint Lucian population are not satisfied with the performance of the police, especially in Castries and in Vieux Fort.” The prime minister was and is the parliamentary representative for the last-mentioned constituency. And yet he considered the situation a challenge “for the police force in a particular sense.” He recalled that when the rate of crime was seriously reduced in New York “one of the major reasons was the demand of accountability by police chief William Brackman from his commanders in the various New York districts.”
Actually, it was police chief William Bratton, not “Brackman,” who in 1994 had cooperated with New York’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani in putting into practice the controversial “broken windows” theory. The prime minister neglected to mention the campaign had also required the recruitment of over ten thousand new police officers and an investment of millions of dollars. Instead, he said: “If the police is to earn confidence from the public, then the police must assure the public at large that it has the will, the courage, the capacity to bring to justice police officers who breach the law and commit offences while carrying out their duties.”
While the police took all the heat for the escalating crime, the prime minister said not a word about his own responsibility for guaranteeing the public safety. Two years ago the current government also conducted its own assessment of crime in the country, during which, as had its predecessor, it laid most, if not all, of the blame for the homicide rate at the feet of the police. As has been the case the with 2003 commission, little followed the 2017 talk shop. In the meantime, the police suffer the fallout from 2010’s Operation Restore Confidence and the expensive consequences, IMPACS especially.
Still the police continue to take blame for what appears to be a repetition of what had led to Operation Restore Confidence in the first place. The difference is that this time around there seems to be no great enthusiasm on their part to confront the monster.
Regrettable, yes, but hardly surprising. The force has since 2012 been operating under stringent sanctions imposed by the U.S. State Department for what it has described as “gross violations of human rights”—alleged extra-judicial police executions of a number of citizens. In consequence the American authorities have for the last six years withheld millions of dollars and other support to the RSLPF, at a time when they are most in need of additional manpower, trained personnel and modern equipment. They’ve also been barred from police activities sponsored under the Patrick Leahy arrangements, even when the venue is the Caribbean.
As with the UK, our own citizens deserve a police force capable of operating according to the highest public expectations. But dream police forces cost money. Lots of it. Training, modern equipment, wages, all of that demands astounding amounts. It also requires a population cognizant of the fact that a country at war with itself, by which I mean civil war brought on by mindless politics; a people ready to face the irreducible truth that crime is no respecter of person—or of political party—can only bring itself more pain. One last point, I have been reliably informed that current police manpower comes down to one officer per 175 citizens. Nice!
