And the Commissioner of police would probably want Slingshot to design him some kind of cell phone shield! For weeks he’s been complaining that his officers are too caught in their screens and not the streets they should be watching. This came to a head after - at least the third murder happened on the same stretch of Orange Street that has seen three murders - and all that happened in the view of a fixed police patrol. But, instead, the cops were viewing their cell phones - and that’s why the COPMOL has instituted a strict ceps phone usage policy for police. He told us about it yesterday:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
“Murders and shootings occurred right in the immediate area where police are patrolling or should be patrolling and in everyone one of those instances the police officers working in those areas were never able to tell us what happened. When you drive around the city and even out district and you see police officers on their beat, they are always on their phone. Instances where there are two patrol officers you will see them sitting at the check point and both of them on their phones. Myself and my management team decided that we are going to put together a cellphone policy that is going to restrict, to certain extent, the use of cellphones whilst on duty. It is not a total restriction because we try to be lenient and we try to understand that people may have emergencies. So the directive is that in situations where two or more persons are patrolling only one would be allowed to have a phone so that the person who has the phone would be able monitor the blogs and if needs be would be able to assist the other in terms of making a phone call or as the case may be.â€
Jules Vasquez
“But also police are awarded and encouraged to put everything on the blog every search, everyone encounter, they are encouraged to do that.â€
Chester Williams
“Yes and that is why again the senior person on the patrol is going to have a phone. We want that the senior person on the patrol who is going to take command and control of the blog and what needs to go on the blog is placed on the blog. If it is that officers could have limited themselves to the phone and only use it for emergency purposes then wouldn’t have to reach this stage but they have become so addicted to the cell phone that that addiction is taking away the attention from the public. Jules, it isn’t something that I wish we would have implemented but the situation on the ground is such that the only way that the public is going to get the attention from the police is by the implementation of this policy. And as much as there may be some officers who are aggrieved by this policy, I stand behind it and it is going to be enforced.â€
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