Hotline bling

NEW POLICE Commissioner Gary Griffith has hit the ground running, inviting the public to use his phone number as a crime hotline. In doing so, he’s underlined the most crucial problem facing the Police Service: the public’s lack of trust. No matter how many hotlines are available, people won’t come forward to report crime and, more crucially, to act as witnesses in court if they cannot trust police officers.

Griffith should be praised for sending the right signal by making a personal line available for this purpose. Doing so invites citizens to regard the matter in terms of human interaction. And it also draws upon the substantial goodwill that only a new police commissioner has.

Hotlines have played a role in crime interdiction for some time. You can dial 555 toll-free from any phone in Trinidad and Tobago to report any criminal activity. The more well-known hotline, however, is 800-TIPS run by Crime Stoppers Trinidad and Tobago. But Crime Stoppers is actually a private company. It was formed in 1999 with a mission to be the “the premier, flagship, private sector mechanism through which every citizen of Trinidad and Tobago can participate effectively and successfully in combating crime.”

Over the years, however, Crime Stoppers’ record has been mixed. According to its website, as at April, the hotline received 586,493 calls. Of these, only 19,586 were true tips and 1,599 people were arrested or charged. Still, the hotline has helped recover a total of $20 million in stolen property and $294 million in narcotics.

In a world where our communications are vulnerable to all sorts of interception and interference, how can people be convinced to use any of these numbers? That is the real challenge that faces Griffith. The situation is not helped by recurring instances of police shootings which have damaged the reputation of the police.

On Sunday, 19-year-old Wayne Roy Samuel was shot in circumstances that have raised questions over police conduct. Police say Samuel was armed and drew a gun, while Samuel’s relatives say he was a marked man and was ambushed. When cases like this are left unresolved, they widen the gap between the citizenry and the hard-working women and men who protect and serve.

For Griffith to make headway on the problem of trust, the public needs to see police officers being held to account by watchdog bodies such as the Police Complaints Authority, the Police Service Commission and even the Parliament’s Committee on National Security.

The Police Commissioner may be putting his own reputation on the line, so to speak, with this initiative. But with a rampant crime rate, and a considerable trust issue, some hotline bling might not be such a bad thing.

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