REPORTEDLY, we are a nation in transition, and so we can reasonably expect certain aspects of our country’s development to move at a controlled pace. There are some though, such as police professionalisation which should not be as pedestrian.

Here at the Anna Regina Police Station, in my view, the level of such professionalism leaves much to be desired. On two occasions, while seeking to address a matter of grave concern with a senior officer at that station, I became the victim of a hung receiver. This is also the same senior officer who declared that he is “unapproachable”, when questioned as to why my matters cannot be addressed at his level. For a phone to be hung up on a civilian by a public servant executing a function of the state is a misfortune, but for a senior officer, entrusted with serving the public fairly and impartially to articulate he is “unapproachable” is most appalling. In addition to this letter, this encounter is now formally engaging the attention of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA).

Police officers, especially one as senior as this gentleman, must know that with their office comes the responsibility of healthy public relations, dispensed most fairly. They must know that except in a totalitarian form of policing, discourtesy is a regimen for fractured police- public relationships. As it is, I now stand ill- disposed to any form of police mediation which might have resolved my matter. This is the grim consequence of domineering and boorish attitudes.

G. Douglas Gourley’s “Police Public Relations” can serve as a useful read for many police officers inclined to professionalism. Noteworthy in that treatise is the widely held view that “policemen are uneducated and of low mentality”; that they are “of doubtful honesty and integrity” and that “the only way to be safe from [their] tyranny is to have either wealth or ‘pull’.”  Gourley does admit that many of such indictments cannot be fairly charged, but he affirms that “at various times and places each has been successfully proved”. I seek not to besmear the reputation of the police, but officers need to be reminded that their occupation carries many negative perceptions, and the surest way of disproving such jaundiced views is to maintain healthy relationships with all the respective “publics” constituting the society they serve.

Had it not been for my encounter with a few highly amenable and polite officers right here at Anna Regina, this senior officer’s conduct would have alienated not just me, but all other members comprising my sociological public.One can only surmise how disastrous solving crimes would be when citizens lack confidence in the police.

It is my hope that the PCA, along with the Commissioner of Police, and even the Minister of Home Affairs, would share these few pointers (paraphrased from Gourley’s treatise) with their subordinates, who are equally, public servants remunerated monthly from taxes levied on the common citizen:

1. Police represent only a fraction of the public they serve, and can only effectively discharge their duties if they maintain good will and co operation with such clients.

2. Law enforcement is not an end of itself, but a means to an end- an orderly society.

3. Police themselves are the most important factor of how the public view them.

Most importantly, I entreat the said authorities to examine the levels of professionalism which currently exist at this police station. There is no harm in proving me wrong.
ROMAIN KHAN