THE SANCTIONED strength of the police is 7,884 officers. However, the actual strength of the service in previous years has been around 86 per cent, with a shortfall of more than 1,000. Given that this shortfall continues to be a problem, the reports this week that police officers could be proceeding on protracted periods of vacation leave amid one of the most challenging escalations of crime in our country's history has raised some degree of concern.

But this is not a new issue.

The 2017 report of the Prof Ramesh Deosaran-led manpower audit committee flagged the matter of vacation leave as being among several aspects of the service in need of urgent reform. That report calculated that in addition to the shortfall in sanctioned strength, as much as 20 per cent of officers are on leave at any given time. Given that police officials work shift systems, this means, if we split a day into two shifts for example, that there are just 2,350 officers on active duty at any given moment for the whole of Trinidad and Tobago. Many of these officers will be on desk duty or buried under paperwork.

'Is this adequate?' the committee asked. It noted deficiencies in basic police record-keeping on vacation leave but nonetheless called for the entire system to be reviewed for both First Division and Second Division officers and for the development of an effective vacation leave management policy.

Six years later, here we are.

To say that police vacations need to be properly managed and staggered is not to say that the police are not entitled to their leave. They are.

The police regulations mandate that 'leave, other than sick leave, injury leave and maternity leave, shall be granted subject to the exigencies of the service.' Leave is not normally allowed to accumulate to excessive levels. Permission is needed, in theory, from the top brass if so. And yet, as far back as 2017, there were nine per cent of officers who had over 400 days of leave owed to them. Such figures are simply unacceptable.

'This situation is detrimental to both the officer and the organisation as it presents the potential for issues related to health and welfare, work-life balance, possibilities of diminishing returns for the officer, and loss of efficiency,' the service noted this week.

We agree.

At the same time, the public has an interest in ensuring there are enough police officers to go around.

However, the reality is we need more boots on the ground, or better leave systems. We need better training and the more effective deployment of technology in crime fighting so that we do not have to play an endless numbers game in relation to manpower while criminals rampage.

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