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Independent Senator Deoroop Teemal. –
In a scathing criticism, Independent Senator Deoroop Teemal called on Tuesday for the police to be restructured because of corruption in the service. In his contribution to the senate budget debate, Teemal criticised the move to inject more money into police manpower and equipment.”To be effective, state-of-the-art tools require a state-of-the-art TTPS and we are far removed from that,” he said. “Whenever the issue of TTPS comes up, I notice a lot of us choose to tread exceedingly carefully for some reason or the other,like if we are walking on eggshells and we don’t want to offend anybody.”The intention is not to offend, but in terms of where we are, where the TTPS is, I think really, honest assessment and honest evaluation- it leaves much to be desired,” he said. He cited Minister of Finance Colm Imbert’s statements during the budget presentation that the government understands public confidence and trust in the police are low, and that the government intends to create a vetted unit of officers with integrity. He said this was nothing short of an “admission of the corruption” in the police.
“Imagine, we have to form special units within the TTPS of vetted police officers (and) pay them more in order to do their job the police service is supposed to be doing in the first place. It’s an admission of corruption because it means there are corrupt police officers in sufficient numbers…to affect the performance of the police service,” he said. He said any discussion on crime is incomplete without speaking about police reform in a structured and meaningful way. “What is being done to reform the police service?” he asked. “We are sinking billions of dollars every year into the police service and we have seen patterns that have developed into the service.
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“Sometimes I think maybe the thinking is that the police service is untouchable, that we have to pamper, we have to coerce for a service that we are paying for, that taxpayers are paying for.” He said the public’s mistrust of the police service wasn’t misplaced and blamed the levels of corruption in the organisation. ‘You talk to the average citizen outside there: they are scared stiff of making a report to the police. They are scared stiff because they tell you, they would tell you, that the person they making the report to, they do not know what connection that police has with the criminal elements in this country – and that is common talk there. It is not unique,” he said.
