Ouch!

Why ‘ouch!’?

Well ……. “If negotiations go according to plans, the new police Commissioner, Canadian Dwayne Gibbs could be taking away a salary of 2.5 million dollar TT dollars per year.

Mr. Gibbs and fellow Canadian Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Ewatski are to take up duties next month, once the salary packages are approved by the cabinet.

If approved Mr. Gibbs would get an estimated 1.5 million dollars.

However his package includes housing, entertainment, phone, transportation and other allowances bringing the figure up to 2.5 million.”

Note: Dat is from today’s I95.5FM website. I would be remiss if I eh admit I tink dey dotish no tail and I really should not cherry pick what I want from dotish people. Buh anyways.

Dat is why ‘ouch!’

Assuming them numbers accurate, is that not a boatload of money for a police commissioner even by American standards? I know good talent has to be rewarded but is he really that good or is it more a question that because he was the pick for the job and is a foreigner the feeling is they have no choice put to drop money in he lap and only stop when he say, ‘when’?

At the end of the day, I think it is these kinds of madly wid disparities and head-scratching acts that call into question the sanity of those in power in T&T, PNM or otherwise. By what barometer can you go from the kind of money paid to former local CoPs to this kind of money to another, (foreign), CoP? Let me ask it a different way. Say Williams, the Trini had been selected as CoP, would he have gotten anything remotely similar to what Gibbs is supposedly going to get? Doh worry, that is a rhetorical question as I think we all know the answer already. Besides, Williams is a deputy CoP and he salary cyar hold ah candle nexmot tuh de udder Canadian wid de ‘ethnic’ name, Ewatski nah. Dey have Polish people in Canada?

So now the question is not so much whether this kind of salary plus perks are justified, well not so much the perks but the salary, but will CoP to-be, Gibbs, earn it? Will crime drop and if it does will the PNM use that in its ‘come-back’ campaign saying it is because of the programs it put in place. The last piece of dat program being the three offshore patrol boats that I see Sandy saying should be accepted from the boat-builder.

I suspect if Gibbs goes in and immediately puts into place radical, (read ‘common sense’), plans to address crime and these plans work, (what a novel idea, crime plans that work), he will get grudging acceptance.

However if nothing in terms of the process by which the CoP runs the TTPS has changed and he does not get the kind of semi dictatorial power a police chief should have, it go be bacchanal, commess and endless confusion and he go take he money and run by Calder Hart.

Ah taking bets and giving odds eh. I expect plenty drama once he take up he post so no betting on whether the obvious go happen.

Meanwhile?

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!