Many people in the Cayman Islands might not even realise there has been an organization here since 1994 that represents police officers.

But there is; and the Royal Cayman Islands Police Association has recently reformed after electing new membership following a rocky period that saw two of its leaders retire from the police service.

Group president, Inspector Rudolph Gordon of the Financial Crime Unit, said he wants officers to know someone is there to represent their interests. And Gordon says the organization intends to be “a bit more vocal” than it has been in past years.

“If an officer reports a matter, say, to their manager…and they don’t feel that their issues were appropriately addressed, they can come to us,” Gordon says.

The police association represents all RCIPS officers from the police constable rank all the way up to superintendent, whether those officers are dues-paying members or not. However, certain benefits – such as payment for legal representation - are afforded only to members who are paid up, Gordon says.

The group recently met with Police Commissioner David Baines about various issues that officers have spoken of privately and publicly for a number of years. “The fact that police would come to you tells me something,” he says. “They feel the need to go to somebody.” 

Gordon and police Sergeant Betty Ebanks, also a member of the association management, say the commissioner was accommodating and seemed to want to work with the officers during the 30 June meeting.

But there are certain issues on which labour and management don’t see eye to eye.

“A lot of the time the commissioner(s) talk about bringing in specialist officers and we don’t feel like enough is being done to make provision for the local officers,” Gordon says.

This issue of local promotion – often called succession planning in Cayman - has been a bone stuck in the gullet of many local police officers for a long time.

The idea behind it in the Public Service Management Law is that government agencies are expected to train Caymanians for management level positions within any organisation. Gordon says RCIPS has failed to do that in many cases, particularly in specialist policing jobs. 

“First of all, we know of no succession plan in that sense,” Gordon says. “(The commissioners say) we are short of this skill and we have to bring in experts.  But what you don’t see is a programme to address the shortfall on a more permanent basis.

“It’s always, ‘let’s bring in the skills’, but not, ‘let’s bring up what you have to meet that skill’.”

Ebanks believes the lack of cogent succession plans is one of the factors that has led to the development of a younger, less experienced police service in Cayman.

“The number of long-serving officers, Caymanian or expatriate, is in the minor numbers,” she says. “Most of them have gone, retired, resigned…so we have a high turnover of young officers.

“Those officers with more experience tend to get discouraged and either return to their hometown or go into the private sector. Then it leaves us with that same repeated turnover that we have the junior officers and nobody to mentor them.” 

A number of more experienced local police officers retired in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan – mostly in 2005. But even up until last year, there were problems noted with police leaving the service faster than they could be replaced.

Between January 2008 and through the first quarter of 2009, before Commissioner Baines took up his post, there was what could be described as an exodus of both foreign and veteran local police officers from the RCIPS.

Forty–nine officers left the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service between January 2008 and February 2009, with more than half of them having resigned.

That data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, shows the 49 police officers, including Caymanians and expatriates, either resigned, ended their contracts, took a leave of absence, or retired from 1 January, 2008, to mid–February 2009.

That was between 12 per cent and 14 per cent of the total number of officers employed by RCIPS at the time.

Of the 27 police officers who resigned from the RCIPS during that period, 14 were from the United Kingdom.

The RCIPS also lost 10 veteran officers to retirement during that period. All ten were Caymanians with between 20 and 39 years of experience on the force.

The police service has never been able to recover its full numbers since these departures.

Upon taking the helm on 1 June, 2009, Commissioner Baines sought to boost a police staffing shortfall of some 50 officers, partly by adding new recruits and partly by bringing in veteran law officers from jurisdictions including the UK, Canada and Europe to handle more detailed skill work and investigative services.

Ebanks says this is one area where the RCIPS can take advantage of the incoming expertise.

“(In the past) the organisation did not identify anyone and peg them onto the experienced officers, learn what they do…so when he leaves you know exactly what to do,” she says. “If we want two specialists, we bring two. We don’t bring one and say ‘let’s train one’.”

There is no seven-year residency term limit policy in place for government workers, including police, and that means foreign officers can stay here as long as they like assuming their contracts are renewed every two years.

But Ebanks says that’s not happening, either.

“We don’t know whether the environment is conducive to them staying; we don’t know what it is, we haven’t identified a cause.”

Operation Tempura

One of the less frequently reported side effects of the two-year long misconduct and corruption investigation within the RCIPS - known as Operation Tempura - was a major behind-the-scenes bust up between former acting RCIPS commissioner James Smith and previous leaders of the police association.

The disagreement involved the return of Chief Superintendent John Jones – one of three RCIPS commanders placed on leave because of the investigation in 2008. Jones was cleared of any wrongdoing in connection with the investigation. 

Some local police association members had privately expressed concerns about Jones being given a new contract and, at one point, had scheduled a press conference to speak about it. That conference never happened.

Association members also met with Smith about Jones’ reinstatement. Smith declined to comment about the meeting.

Less than a year after this internal dispute became public, both then-Police Association President Kim Evans, and Vice President Courtney Myles retired from the police service.

Commissioner Baines, upon taking over the force, publicly expressed his concerns that certain “factions” seemed to have appeared within the RCIPS.

Inspector Gordon and Sergeant Ebanks said the differences within the force - including those of race and nationality – were discussed in the 30 June meeting with Commissioner Baines.

“To say (those matters) don’t present some issues….it has its difficulties,” Ebanks says. “(The commissioner) has given us his assurance that he will do all that is in his power to identify problems and limit it.”

Gordon noted that RCIPS has not come up with a diversity programme yet to address issues of race, sex, age and other matters regarding discrimination within, as well as outside of, the police service.

Office space 

Although the police association has been in existence for some time, it doesn’t have an office space or dedicated staff members to operate such an office.

Gordon says this is another matter that has been taken up with the commissioner.

“Currently, the representatives…we do regular policing and then we address officers’ issues,” he says. “It’s kind of difficult, and we would like to have representatives in a permanent role to be in a better position to effectively address the officers’ issues.”

The association has asked that some of its representatives be allowed to work full-time in that office so that police have a place they know they can go to.

The absence of an office for the police association may have been one of the reasons why the RCIPS association “did not appear to be as active to some officers”, according to Sergeant Ebanks.

The office could also be used to address other matters such as police officers’ health and welfare.

“We don’t have an officers’ health and safety policy,” Gordon says.

“They feel like everything is coming from everywhere and everything is changing and it creates a problem for their welfare,” Ebanks says. “E.G., The long hours, having worked 12 hours all night long and you’ve repeatedly lost your weekends or holidays, special occasions with family and friends, it starts to take its toll on you.”

While there has been some discussion over the years about changing the 12-hour shift schedule the police service currently uses, Gordon says there is no plan to propose any changes to that from the association’s perspective.

“The feedback we get from officers is that they like the 12-hour shift system,” he says.

Inspector Gordon admits many officers don’t like nighttime shifts, which typically go from 7pm to 7am, but he says that they are simply “part of the nature of what we do.”

“When it comes to shift work, I think one joins the organisation knowing it is shift work, but they get here and hope that ‘it will never catch me’,” Ebanks says.

Gordon says a separate human resources meeting, which association representatives attend periodically, has now been set up with the RCIPS command structure. Association officials will no longer attend command staff meetings, known as the ‘Gold Command’ meeting within the service. “That’s not the most appropriate place to address the association’s issues,” he says.

But the association will address those issues, Gordon says, one way or another. 

“We do intend to be more vocal where issues relating to RCIPS officers’ are concerned,” he says.