Dear Editor,
I READ with much pleasure in the print media that 21 members of the Guyana Police Force, ranging from the rank of constables to deputy superintendents, recently successfully completed a three months training course in leadership. According to the media the course was sponsored by the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Programme.

Ms. Alexandra King, Political and Economic Chief at the United States of America Embassy in Guyana; David Ramnarine, Commissioner of Police (ag); and Khemraj Ramjattan, Minister of Public Security addressed the graduants at the graduation. They all raised some apposite issues and concerns.

The report stated that Ms. Alexandra King called on the participants to share what they have learnt in the last three months with their colleagues in an effort to bring positive change among them. The acting top cop cautioned the ranks to put what they have been taught into good use, and to use the knowledge and skills for the good, as the force is increasingly under the microscope.

The honourable minister urged the ranks not to be vessels to be filled, but rather as lamps to be lit and shine. He posited that many times he noticed that nice programmes come and that when the players leave, the passion and so on die. He yearned for people who will ensure that it flows from there. Training in the Guyana Police Force is a sine qua non. It is the lifeblood of the organisation. It is the main root of development in the GPF. Other sectors even though very important are but the branches of the tree. Cut the main root and the tree dies.

The police have boasted and quite rightly so of exposing hundreds of their ranks to training conducted by the police themselves; at the University of Guyana and other institutions of learning; done locally by overseas facilitators from the ABC and other countries as was the case of the just-concluded leadership training under review; and training overseas. These training inputs although commendable invite many unanswered questions: How do the police identify training needs?

Does the training satisfy the needs of the GPF? Are there benefits for the individuals officers? Are there benefits for the supervisors/ managers? Are there benefits for the department, the community they serve and the country as a whole? Or is it that history will record that an innumerable number of police ranks were exposed to some kind of training and nothing else happened?

According to Alice in Wonderland, if you do not know where you are going any road will take you there. Sometime ago I wrote that the ideal thing for the police to do is to conduct a Job Task Analysis countrywide, to identify training needs as it relates to a vastly changing and dynamic environment they are now required to serve and protect. The process is a time consuming and expensive exercise, but it is indispensable. However, in the interim there are other areas the police can be guided by to identify training needs. Space does not allow me to go into greater details but I had outlined several areas in an article in the last edition of the Guyana Review.

In addition, there must be a fit and proper system in place to evaluate the effectiveness and benefits of the police training. It is imperative that the training activities be evaluated. Bumgarner (2001) suggests, ” In doing full-fledge training evaluation, favourable evaluation results can be used to demonstrate the usefulness of training and the appropriateness of expending training dollars.” The Kirkpatrick Model of training evaluation can be very instructive. It has four levels: reaction, learning, behaviour and results. The reaction level focuses on the participants’ perception of the training.

This is the most common type of evaluation. The learning level focuses on the knowledge or skills required, ideally through a pre and post test. The behaviour level looks at whether or not the knowledge or skills is actually applied to the job by observing the participants use what was learnt.

The results level focuses on the department’s return on investment or cost benefits analysis, for example cost savings, increase in work output or quality. Bumgarner recommends, “For criminal justice managers to know that the organisation has truly benefitted through the training of its employees, all four levels should be examined.”

Regards
Clinton Conway