Transcript
ROBERT ALI: The new approach the Commissioner [Gari Baki] is embarking on is more to do with random monitoring roles that Internal Affairs will be performing.
DON WISEMAN: Tell us how that works.
RA: Basically what we intend to do in Internal Affairs is we conduct monitoring and over-sighting roles, internally, on our own men to ensure that they are doing the right things as they go out on their normal policing duties. We check on our own men to see if they are properly dressed, and all this.
DW: Yes but the essence of the problems affecting the police are far more fundamental than how they look. There have been some very serious issues in terms of discipline, the use of excessive violence and also the use of guns and I think there has been talk of having an unarmed police force.
RA: Yeah, yeah those are issues we have discussed. Basically, the general consensus that we had in the commanders is that we are not necessarily unarming the police but to how and when should firearms be carried and who should be entitled to carry firearms. For example are the front line policing personnel entitled to carry weapons? If so we work out what sort of weapons are they entitled to carry. So we try to minimise some of the risks that are currently putting the public's lives at risk, in the use of firearms. Once we identify that the next stage will be putting the training up, appropriate to the level of the firearms that you [have] categorised, who should be carrying it, so that you give proper competency testing on personnel who are entitled to carry firearms.
DW: In terms of policing I think there have been a number of valid gripes over the years in terms of pay, training, housing - all of these things. Are they going to be improved for police?
RA: We have improvement in pay but it is just that I think the housing issues, from my observation, are currently being addressed at the moment, but it is still a big challenge for us to try and increase housing for our manpower, which we are currently undertaking at the moment. The government has issued directions to the Commissioner to increase manpower to 10,000 by the year 2018 or thereabouts, so we have got a huge challenge on us. As we increase manpower the need for housing also increases. So if the government is making that call it also places challenge to fully and adequately resourcing the police in terms of housing, so we can address this issue as we go along.
