The Tribune

POLICE Commissioner Clayton Fernander’s defence of the recent promotion exercise that has left the Royal Bahamas Police Force with 14 assistant commissioners is a curious one.

In 2018, an audit of the force recommended that it only needed six assistant commissioners, and found that the force was top-heavy.

There was something of a public debate when the Minnis administration brought the number of assistant commissioners to eight, despite being the ones who set the audit in motion.

Now we have 14.

By comparison, the United Kingdom’s largest police force is the Metropolitan Police, covering London and surrounding areas. It has no less than 47,000 police officers – and seven assistant commissioners, half the number Commissioner Fernander feels he needs to get the job done.

So what is his justification? He points to a lack of leadership. The leader citing a lack of leadership is an odd thing in itself, but here we are.

He noted an incident from a viral video that involved two young officers arguing in a police station and said there was a “lack of supervision” in that incident.

Then he noted a case where the former head boy of Westminster College was awarded $60,000 in damages and costs for unlawful arrest and false imprisonment and again, while not going too far with his comments as he said his legal team is still investigating, despite the ruling, he said “we are talking about leadership at those divisions”.

It would seem that he feels that in order for police officers to do the right thing, or behave correctly, he needs more people to tell them when behaviour is unacceptable.

It is hard to imagine how the officers in the incident of the viral video which saw two officers arguing before one was wheeled out of the station on an office chair could have felt that was appropriate behaviour no matter how many officers are above them, but that seems to play into his thinking as to why he needs 14 assistants.

Good officers do not need to be told when behaviour such as that is inappropriate, without saddling the public purse with bigger salaries for officers to tell them.

If they do not, they should not have gotten past training. That’s where good behaviour ought to be drummed in to candidates.

The same with the false arrest – and perhaps also by a proper disciplinary process. The talk of a legal team investigating was in response to a question of whether the officers who detained the head boy will be disciplined. The matter has been before the court, the compensation has been ordered – by now the force should long have known whether the officers involved behaved appropriately or not. What does the legal team still have to look into there?

And then there is the elephant in the room – the number of murders our nation continues to have.

In yesterday’s editorial, we highlighted that the commissioner had set a target of fewer than 100 murders twice, and missed that target twice.

Now he says that “we now need to go back to the table and see where we could strategise and do some things differently”.

With 14 assistants, he might need a bigger table.

Find a solution to the murder conundrum and it might well prove worth the extra investment. Fail to do so, and more questions will be asked.