THE EDITOR: In 2006, the leaders of both sides of the political monopoly joined in unanimous bipartisan action to amend the Constitution, allegedly to remove the Prime Minister's veto power in the appointment of the top police offices.

The amendments supposedly gave the Commissioner of Police (CoP) full power to manage the Police Service. However, what the 2006 Constitution amendments did achieve is the sidelining of the Police Service Commission (PSC) by:

1. Giving politicians full power to decide who is appointed as CoP and deputy CoP.

2. Giving the CoP the same powers and authority as the commission over the thousands of police officers and making the CoP more than equivalent to the PSC, given the span of his control compared to the nine officers that remained under its control.

Together the PM and the Opposition Leader succeeded in creating the biggest mess of the management of the Police Service for the sake of increasing politicians' roles in the appointment of the top officers and diminishing the role of the PSC.

In 2006, at a conference at UWI discussing the proposed amendments (and otherwise publicly), Kenneth Lalla (a former chairman of both the Police and Public Service Commissions) and I warned of the mess that was being created in the management of the Police Service.

Every single politician in the Parliament voted in favour and the die was cast - and so it began.

Since then, the Parliament has changed the orders for the appointment of the CoP and deputy commissioners it passed in 2007 at least three times. Here is a list of the legal notices: 165 and 166 of 2007, 56, 101, 102 and 103 of 2009, 218 and 219 of 2015, and 183 of 2021.

The last change was made to allow a person not holding a substantive post in the Police Service to be appointed to act as CoP (clause 4 of Legal Notice 183). Clause 4 was passed apparently when the Cabinet discovered, after three years, that there was a CoP on contract and his contract was coming to an end.

Under the rubric, 'Submission of list of qualified persons to act,' it now says:

'4. Where either the post of Commissioner of Police or Deputy Commissioner of Police is vacant or is about to become vacant, the Commission may submit to the President a list of suitably qualified persons from amongst the ranks of the Police Service, including those on contract or previously on contract, as nominees to act in the offices of Commissioner of Police or Deputy Commissioner of Police, pending the conclusion of the procedure prescribed in paragraph 3.'

Legal Notice 103 of 2009 previously stated in relation to acting appointments to CoP: 'The commission may, as it thinks fit, appoint to act in the office of the Commissioner of Police, a person holding or acting in the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police.'

The present brouhaha in which politicians, the Executive (Cabinet), the PSC and the CoP are now entangled threatens not only the management of the Police Service, but the insulation of the Police Service from political interference that the Privy

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