A law enforcement specialist is warning that a false sense of invincibility and professional arrogance could be a fatal combination for young police officers.
Jerry Goodridge, a force science analyst who studies human behaviour in high stress and deadly force encounters, is raising concerns about the quality of recruitment and training in the T&T Police Service following last week’s murder of PC Russell Ramnarine, an officer with less than two years of service, who was killed along with UWI engineering student Avery Keshwar in an incident in San Juan.
“One has to seriously examine the level of preparation of these young, impressionable police minds, what is being taught to them and whether the relevance of such training is commensurate with the situations that may be presented to them in a reality-based scenario in the field,” Goodridge, a former police officer said.
“This senseless killing of an officer brought to mind the other one in which another young officer dared to put all protocols aside and initiate an attack on a barricaded position at a bar with armed perpetrators, the sequel of which also included another young female officer who had great challenges in operating her service pistol.”
In that earlier incident, PC Kashyap Ryan Lochan was shot and seriously injured when he and two other officers, PC Sookdeo and WPC Cholai, confronted three heavily-armed bandits at a Barrackpore bar on January 2. Lochan, 21, had been a police officer for just six months.
Goodridge, a certified defence firearms instructor who assisted in the development of a use of force policy for the T&T Police Service, said it was necessary to sensibly evaluate training and performance following the two incidents.
Use of force training, discipline, organisational policies, communications, procedures, tactics, self-preservation and inter-divisional operations were among the elements that should go into the transitional preparation of a rookie officer, he explained.
There are different levels of training which ought to be presented to recruits and in-service officers to teach them to function effectively in all policing situations, from routine foot patrols to being the first responder in an active shooter encounter.
Goodridge is calling for an in-depth examination of the platform from which police officers were prepared for encounters of all kinds.
He said police fatalities could be reduced by empowerment through appropriate training from entry and basic to advanced level.
Asked to comment on Goodridge’s observances, president of the Police Service Social and Welfare Association Inspector Anand Ramesar said while there have been instances where young officers had displayed an attitude of invincibility, that was not consistent with the training provided for entry into the T&T Police Service.
In fact, he said, basic training put focus on self-preservation.
Insp Ramesar said his organisation has some concerns about the supervision and control of young police officers because in many instances the training was pointing in one direction, while the practice and procedure pointed in another direction.
He is calling for the development of an organisational strategy for training, practice and procedure to ensure a more unified approach to policing.