Police to boost training with use of technology

The Barbados Police Service (BPS) is embarking on a process of training to improve the level of efficiency and transparency from officers carrying out criminal investigations.

Deputy Commandant of the Regional Police Training Center Christine Stanford told Barbados TODAY that with the advent of new tools like body cameras and video interviews in the station, the need for technology-focused training is important.

“Our next focus will be on criminal investigations and then we move over to technology and the cyber crimes as we are now incorporating technology into our investigations,” Stanford said.

“We have to make sure that the police officers understand the technology, understand how it is being used and understand how we can use it to support the investigations because the force is now a technological force. Technology is in everything so we have to make sure that we move away sometimes from the paper and pen and use the technology that is available.

“We have already started and I am sure members of the public are seeing the bodycams, the police vehicles are equipped with the technology that can help them if a vehicle is registered. So the public is already seeing when you come to police stations, instead of writing in the diary, they input the information into the computer system which can input statistics more speedily. So they are actually seeing some of these improvements as we speak.”

She made the comments amid concerns from criminal lawyers, including Andrew Pilgrim Q.C., about the force’s heavy reliance on confessions from suspects being held in police custody and frequent claims of police brutality..

When asked about strategies specifically geared towards tackling the negative perception, Stanford said such challenges, for the most part, are a thing of the past.

“That was in the past and we do hear that that is a focus of the police, but the investigations lead to more than just confessions because you have forensics, you have the interview on camera, so all of that they’re being trained to do. The investigation from beginning to end would lead to the culmination of the situation or the case at the court,” said the deputy commandant.

“There is constant training, there is constant retraining, and there is no person who is held by the police that likes to be held by the police. So there is always that factor where something has been committed and some person commits something and that is where the investigation comes in to determine who did what. So the relationship between the accused and the police officer will always be strained, but there is always a full process so there will be no fallout of the system.

“The training starts from as basic as the report received, what we do when a report is taken, what the first police officer at the scene of the crime is supposed to do and then it culminates at court. So it is a process from the report to the culmination in court. All of that is trained from beginning to end,” she added.

Stanford said the training centre remains committed to addressing deficits identified by the police service, particularly for officers in various divisions who need to be refreshed in their roles.

On Thursday Stanford led dozens of seasoned officers on a road safety audit as part of a collision investigation course.

“The training centre develops the training. We coordinate the training and we also bring in the experts in the field to train, to teach, to deliver. When we look at the needs analysis, we then go out there and we gather those persons who can deliver the training for us. It can be a police officer or it could be a civilian. It could be a teacher or any person who has that skill, we embrace to deliver the training,” Stanford concluded.
kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb