Some George Town residents said last week that police promotions and the proposed civil servant rollover policy are depriving their neighbourhoods of good patrol officers.
Long-time district resident Mary Thompson light-heartedly scolded senior officers attending a community meeting at Mary Miller Hall Thursday when she spoke about the issue.
‘I hope you don’t change the police force because we need the ones that are here now,’ Mrs. Thompson said.
The problem for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is two-fold.
Most of the officers involved in the service’s neighbourhood policing programme are police constables, the lowest rank in the department. Those who are successful in their jobs and get promoted are often transferred to other areas of the service.
Also, the threat of a seven-year term limit being placed on residency – often referred to as the ‘rollover policy’ – has caused some non-Caymanian RCIPS officers to leave the force in search of other jobs, even though that policy has not yet been implemented for the civil service.
“I think it’s unfortunate because… we want to keep the people that are contributing to this country,” Mrs. Thompson said.
‘You should go to government and ask that this might be something they look into,’ she told police gathered at the meeting.
Actually, RCIPS has already done so. The police service sent a report to Governor Stuart Jack last month asking that all police officers be exempted from the term limit policy. (See Caymanian Compass, 19 March)
George Town police station commander Harlan Powery said he was hopeful RCIPS would hear back from the Governor within a few weeks.
‘We understand how necessary it is to have the contribution of officers from abroad,’ Mr. Powery said. ‘They are our brothers and we hope that we will get a favourable response in regard to their [rollover] exemption.’
George Town MLA Lucille Seymour said that once residents in a particular area do get to know an officer, it’s difficult to have them taken away.
‘Here, at least in the last year, we’ve noticed there’ve been a lot of officers taken from neighbourhood policing,’ Ms Seymour said.
Neighbourhood policing began at RCIPS about four years ago. The concept is to assign one officer to work in a specific area of town, get to know the residents and become that community’s link to the police service.
Mr. Powery said residents shouldn’t look at it as if those officers who get promoted were no longer within the RCIPS, he said they were merely serving the community in another capacity.
Ms Seymour asked that efforts be made to keep certain officers who have shown a knack for neighbourhood policing within the programme.
“I would suggest that it is a unit within itself where promotion ability can go up through the ranks of neighbourhood policing too,” she said.
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