Dr Rowley's bald statement last week about police stations being locked and kept unlit at night produced a quick and assertive response from the Commissioner of Police. It was no surprise that CoP Harewood-Christopher denied the veracity of the statement and acted properly in reassuring the public that the police have our back at all times of the day and night.
All good managers and CEOs know that apologising while defending your troops is what you must do; then you sort out the mess internally, away from public gaze.
Rule number one in management is that you do not blame a junior member of staff or your assistant for any error, and you do not throw your people to the lions. You take full responsibility for the infringement, and if it is serious enough, you resign, because the buck has to stop with you.
The problem with that rule is that you have to depend on your senior managers and middle managers to ensure that operations are as they should be. The bigger the operation, the more important it is that appropriate structures exist to guarantee your policies are well implemented from top to bottom so that you are on a sure footing when you have to defend your organisation.
Truth be told, the CoP cannot really swear on her mother's grave that the PM's information is wrong, only that it is not meant to be.
That being so, in the TTPS, which is a very big and complex operation with many clients and is, in effect, an armed security service, the implementation of the policy has to be regimented with no room for error, because Murphy's Law guarantees that whatever can go wrong will.
There should be no room for error and failure of duty. The police should be a little different from the army about the precision and perfection of the service. After all, the army protects us from external enemies and the police protect us and the state against internal enemies.
The media statement released by the police and followed up by a statement by Deputy CoP (DCP) Junior Benjamin in the wake of the PM's accusation about the apparent lack of courage of the police, hiding at night from criminals, was very revealing in two aspects: the first is that levels of security are tailored to citizens according to the area in which we live and work. Police stations normally 'are categorised as A, B and C class, which determines the scope of services that are provided from each station location.'
The police service offers many services, from providing character certificates, licences and permits, to doing what we most expect police officers to do - keeping the peace and us safe in our homes and public places. We have to hope that whatever level area we happen to live or work in has 'dealing with acts or crime' as the bare minimum service.
The stories are legendary of the police not having cars to go to crime scenes. Maybe that's because those crimes occur in category C areas, or maybe A, and it is a plain falsehood that a car is not available. Maybe for safety reasons we should be thinking of moving to a different-category area, i
