The mounted branch of the police force has 27 horses for 28 ranks but only uses two; the canine branch does not even use its dogs to detect drugs at the airport; and a lance corporal at the height of the crime wave went shopping in Bourda market for his boss.

These three examples represent the basic problem of the police force which is understaffed but still wastes manpower on everything but crime-fighting, says Ramon Gaskin.

“It impairs their ability to respond and to do real police work... [and] people have the perception that it has to do with something other than management and deployment,” Gaskin told the Disciplined Forces Commission yesterday.

The commission has been set up by the National Assembly to review the operations of the disciplined forces and report its findings and recommendations for their improvement.

Gaskin said the police force needed to be completely overhauled to reverse the mismanagement of resources that makes it ineffective.

According to figures in this year’s budgetary estimates the total authorised staffing of the police force is 4220 but there are only 3772 filled positions.

But Gaskin said nearly one third of these policemen were doing immigration work, issuing vehicle fitness certificates or even shopping for senior officers, which can be done by civilians as in other countries.

“At the height of the crime crisis... a Lance Corporal was shopping at Bourda Market in a brand new police car,” he wrote in a 2002 memorandum to the President that was resubmitted to the commission.

Whilst policemen continue to issue passports, do bookkeeping or deliver summonses, stations are left unattended which often caused the public to mistake this for racial prejudice.

“It leads people to believe that they don’t respond because of ethnicity... [and] that it would be more efficient if it had a better complexion. If it had better management it would be more efficient, in my opinion.”

Gaskin believes that the police force, like in other countries, is part of the coercive and violent apparatus of the state although people fail to recognise this fact.

He says he accepts that the force is also service-oriented but considered that violence is its historic tool in the enforcement of the law.

“It’s not a force that does embroidery or holds dinner parties... [It] is tasked with enforcing the law. They have other duties but it is a violent force and equipped with guns for that.”

But he said there was a difference between the expectations of citizens who ran afoul of the law and those who no longer conformed to the constitution.

He said citizens who take up arms against the state are no longer entitled to the protection of the constitution.

He said “these are not normal times” and considered that killings are not normal but are a result of the guerilla warfare between the insurgents who want to engage the police.

“[The police] are willing to accommodate them and these people should not be looking for constitutional protection since they threw that out of the window.”

But Gaskin’s comment had Irish human rights activist and commissioner Maggie Beirne in strong disagreement: “I have a government which does it all the time, killing to stop killing, and it is not the solution.”

Justice of Appeal Ian Chang chairs the commission which includes former Attorney-General Charles Ramson SC, former National Security Adviser, Brigadier (rtd) David Granger, attorney-at-law, Anil Nandlall and Beirne.