In the face of the continued and significant challenges posed by crime in the region, Caribbean police chiefs yesterday began a week-long meeting aimed at finding new strategies to combat the scourge.
Rising levels of crime have forced governments to pump more resources into law enforcement, but authorities are still facing questions about the adequacy of the current response. Addressing the 24th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police (ACCP) which is being hosted here, Barbados Police Commissioner Darwin Dottin said they would have to shift their emphasis from addressing the symptoms and focus on tackling the root causes.
He admitted that past challenges to law enforcement are nothing when compared with those of today.
As transshipment ports, caught between the producers and consumers of narcotics, Caribbean nations have suffered from increased levels of drug-related criminality and organised crime, said Dottin, who is the serving ACCP President. He added that the emerging threat of climate change–resulting in the “unregularised” movement of populations as well as the reduction in arable land, likely leading to catastrophic events–would demand that a more critical response be engineered to further develop the law enforcement capacity of nations.
It is in this vein that he said that police forces would have to be well-resourced, well-trained and given modern facilities and accommodation. He stressed though that these must be complemented by a modern justice system. He further emphasized that policing is part of a paradigm, explaining that the issues which have stymied the work of the criminal justice system must also be addressed.
Dottin also told his colleagues that their response to crime would have to be multidimensional and reflective of the link between social development and regional security. The challenges posed by crime present no great fix, but according to him there is the need for a moving away from a tendency to treat the symptoms of crime towards addressing its root causes. Against this backdrop, he said police commissioners would have to ask themselves whether or not the current framework for combating crime adequately addresses the challenges.
Host Police Commissioner Henry Greene welcomed the delegates at yesterday’s opening ceremony at the Savannah Suite of the Pegasus Hotel. Greene admitted that the post of commissioner has brought with it many challenges and as a result he welcomed the new commissioners to what he called the licks team. “You have joined the licks team,” he said. “This is the team that seldom gets the praise but gets a lot of licks. But we don’t cry.”
Greene highlighted successful levels of cooperation between police forces of the region in the hosting of the recently concluded Summit of the Americas and the International Cricket Council’s 2007 Cricket World Cup.
The conference is being held under the theme “Police Reform: An Imperative for Quality Service.” It began with a musical welcome by the Guyana Police Force’s band and each commissioner was ushered in with a bearer of his country’s flag.
The commissioners of police would be engaged in discussions in plenary sessions over the next few days. The conference concludes on Friday.
