Tonga's police commissioner says a string of incidents involving officers over the past year have damaged the image of the police.
Five police officers will go on trial next March on manslaughter charges in relation to the death of a New Zealand police man in August last year.
Late last year three officers were charged with the same offence after the death of a 21 year old man on Tongatapu and just recently a senior officer was charged with assault while on suspension for his alleged involvement in corruption.
The police commissioner Grant O'Fee told Bridget Tunnicliffe such incidents have been a blow to their reputation.
GRANT O'FEE: We'd be naive to think the public of Tonga haven't seen these things and drawn their own conclusions, which would be largely negative. So we have suffered considerable damage from these things - really heavy blows to the reputation of the Tongan police. So the question is what are we doing about it? To change the attitude in an organisation of 450 people, you don't do it overnight. So we've just got to a new strategic plan that's about one thing, and that is earning the trust and confidence of the people of Tonga. Everything we do is directed towards that. And I've personally spoken in a classroom situation with six courses, a total of about 250 staff - that's ongoing. We have a recruit course coming in in December. I will be speaking to a recruit course every week that they're here, emphasising the ethics and integrity. And we've done a lot of other things. But probably the most, I think, in the long term, effective, will be a painful-now thing that we have done is we have suspended or arrested or dismissed about 30 of our staff. That has all been for dishonesty or brutality. And it's about 7% of my total strength in the space of about 15 months. So we're trying to make it very plain to our staff and the public that offending by police officers isn't tolerated, it will result in your dismissal and criminal charges if justified. And I think that message is very slowly I am cautiously optimistic that we're starting off an attitude change in our staff. There's a couple of interesting statistics come out of that. Of the 30 officers that I've just mentioned 29 of them are male and there's one female on my executive. Of my three deputy commissioners two are female and one is a male. Don't misunderstand me, I have some very, very good male staff, but there's something about the women here that sets them apart, in my opinion. There's some very, very high quality police officers among the policewomen of Tonga. As I say, we're not going to change the attitudes of the Tongan police in the two or three years that I am here, but we will I think lay a pretty good platform.
BRIDGE TUNNICLIFFE: What about in terms of recruiting trainee police officers? Do you feel that the vetting procedures and the standards are high enough for those people to be accepted into the police in the first place?
GO: Yeah, I do. We go through a pretty rigourous examination of their background. The difficulty in Tonga is no different to the difficulty in New Zealand or America or any other police department, in my experience, around the world. When the recruit leaves the police college they are usually bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and very idealistic. It's what happens in that formative first six months to a year of operational service that they come under the influence of people who may not have the same ethical standards that we want them to have. That's when that influence starts to take effect, in my opinion. So I'm confident about the young men and women we bring in. It's the leadership we have in the field at the moment, is where we lift our game.
