Looking for ‘integrity’ in Trinidad and Tobago is a serious business cost, and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley is all too willing to pay people for having it, especially members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS).

I suggest they establish their own integrity commission. The goodly doctor decided ‘vetted units’ are required. This also suggests that members enter the service without being ‘vetted’.

For decades, I have been arguing that the TTPS is at the root of the crime phenomenon in T&T. I recall when Trevor Paul was a police commissioner and said something like, ‘I can only hire from what the education system sends me.’

Acknowledging that there were ‘too many criminals in the Police Service’, PM Rowley once again blamed the entire organisation instead of simply pointing to the heads of the respective departments or divisions.

We were taught that ‘a fish rots from the head’. Apparently, it is much easier to acknowledge that the entire organisation is overrun with corrupt officers than to identify the corrupt and incompetent individuals at the helm who would have been selected and promoted on spurious grounds.

Such a claim, I am quite sure, does great service for the morale of the few members of the organisation who go beyond the call of duty, who exist in every organisation.

As head of the National Security Council, in for the last eight years, I am sure that Rowley has more access to information regarding the crime situation than most citizens. Did he now recognise that the TTPS has issues in integrity? One cannot help but wonder what he has been doing since 1991.

‘Bouffing up’ media personnel and anyone who questions him does not count.

How does one vet members of an organisation like the TTPS ‘to ensure their integrity is intact’? Who are the expected ‘vetters’ and what information would they be relying on? How can the political directorate demand integrity when the Cabinet is stacked with individuals who demonstrate no concern for integrity?

Several members of this Cabinet have purchased vehicles with all the perks that come with their positions, with one member turning around and selling his without so much as legally transferring it. How can anyone demand integrity while accommodating two individuals known in social media circles as the ‘recusal twins’, having recused themselves countless times, if only ‘to avoid a conflict of interest’. The mere idea that one must recuse oneself demonstrates a conflict of interest.

Integrity is a combination of several characteristics, none of which is present in the recruitment process.

Too many individuals who end up in the ranks of the TTPS do so based on ‘who knows you’.

This is the same TTPS who has yet to determine those responsible for the ‘Day of Total Policing’.

The history of incompetence running through this organisation is reflected in every division and is responsible for the crime wave we have been seeing from as far back as one wishes to go. Individuals may do well to remember that Yasin Abu Bakr was a part of this organisation before 1990.

The recent introduction of drugs and guns only serves to highlight the massive incompetence and lack of integrity.

In a society dominated by dishonesty and lack of trust, integrity is just another pipe dream. I recall when the Integrity Commission collapsed a couple years ago and how long it took then president Max Richards to source five people to create a new commission. And the then head of the commission, a gentleman who was a man of the cloth, with a PhD in ethics, of all things, was found to have plagiarised an entire document…. So much for integrity.

Rudolph Paul
D’Adadie