Archive for February 2nd, 2011
FOI reveals increase in public complaints about cops
(CNS): A response to a freedom of information request submitted by a local attorney has revealed that public complaints to the RCIPS more than doubled during 2009 when compared to the previous two years. In 2007 there were 87 complaints made by the public to the Police Professional Standards Unit (PSU), and in 2008 there were 93. However, in 2009 the complaints soared to 197. The FOI does not reveal the reasons why there was an increase in such complaints but the local attorney who made the request said he believes that the figures illustrate the current poor management of the country’s police service.
The FOI request, which was filed by attorney Peter Polack, also revealed that there are currently 34 ‘sub judice cases’ — complaints which are now being handled by the courts and have not yet been resolved – and that the resolution of complaints can be a long process.
Addressing the time period it takes for a complaint to be handled, the RCIPS said that on average it takes around three months for the police to deal with complaints, which fits within the guidelines that all complaints should be handled within 120 days. However, because of the variables in the nature of the complaints and the delay in receiving information from the legal department, the police said it can take longer, even as much as one year. The police said they consider a case dealt with if it leaves the PSU and goes on tothe legal department.
“It should be noted for the purposes of recording time take, the ‘clock stops’ when a case is in sub judice and when the investigators’ report is either submitted to the DCI PSU or the legal department,” the FOI response states.
The request also shows that the police commissioner himself made complaints to the PSU about two officers. The issue, Polack says, raises a genuine question over a conflict of interest as it is the commissioner which oversees the process and applies the sanction to an officer. There are no complaints in previous years from commissioners, which Polack believes indicates that previous commissioners may have recognized that conflict.
Polack also questions why the public does not know the outcome of what amounts to some 377 complaints over the three year period and whether officers were reprimanded, suspended, fired or exonerated.
“The recent disclosure on the non-performing Police PSU must confirm to the lame duck leadership of law enforcement that the time to depart has now arrived,” Polack told CNS in the wake of receiving the FOI, as he warned that errors of the past should not be repeated.
“Capable and cost effective leadership can be found within the ranks of the existing RCIPS. The low morale of rank and file policemen requires an end to the comedy of errors, from arrests for non-existent offences to the polygraph disaster and more,” the attorney said. “The disappointment with an ineffectual administration can only persist unless a compelling change is embraced.”
Details of the wider current public satisfaction levels with the police are expected to be revealed soon when the RCIPS publishes the results of its recent public opinion survey. For three weeks at the end of 2010 the police circulated the survey to the public via its website and on the ground at supermarkets.
Police said the result of the survey will inform future policy and have committed to releasing the findings. “The survey will not only help us establish the needs and expectations of the people we serve, it will also allow us to identify areas where we are doing well and those where improvements need to be made,” Deputy Commissioner Anthony Ennis said at the launch of the survey.
Schools not an ‘experiment’
(CNS): Award winning school designer Prakash Nair (left) flew into Cayman yesterday in order to answer the criticisms and disparaging remarks made about the new Cayman Islands high schools that he and the late Jeffery Lackney designed. Nair said the current minister only seems to understand the concepts of 1950s instruction, which will not prepare the next generation of school leavers for the competitive world of work they will face. Denying that there was anything experimental about the schools he created for Cayman, he said the concepts are already being used around the world in awarding winning, exceptionally successful schools. “It is not an experiment when a concept has already been proven to succeed,” he said.
Nair spoke to CNS about the disparaging comments Rolston Anglin, the current education minister, had made on public radio in Cayman and in the country’s Legislative Assembly about both the schools and the designers and pointed out that it is the children who will be let down by a return to past failures.
Having designed hundreds of schools on five continents, in 32 different countries, in deprived and difficult areas, as well as in communities where parents have high expectations, Nair says he has not come to Cayman to defend his reputation. That is perfectly intact, he added, not least because of the string of success andawards he and his partners have enjoyed for their work creating and redesigning schools, but he says he is in Cayman to try and save the learning communities he designed in the best interests of the children of the Cayman Islands.
Admitting he is a futurist, Nair asked: “But who else would you want to design schools? Someone rooted in the past? Children are in the future. They are the future. We cannot anticipate what their world will be but we know already that they will face the most competitive work environment. Children from the Cayman Islands will be competing on the world stage for work with people from China and India, whose populations are so vast those governments can afford to lose thousands of people from the education system. Cayman cannot afford to lose one student.”
Having designed what has been awarded the world’s best school by the oldest educational body in the world, Nair has also redesigned schools in intercity areas, such as Detroit and New York, where students were failing in huge numbers and turned them around to create places where children are thrilled to learn and with pass rates exceeding all expectations. He says no two schools that he has created are identical but they are all designed to inspire learning.
The architect said he believed the current minster simply does not understand the design and how the spaces create more positive learning environments but misunderstands the concept. He said the minister has also misled the Cayman public as the schools are designed with many classrooms and closed areas for quiet learning. He said there would never be a scenario where four different teachers are taking four different classes in the same space.
Nair said none of his partners are doing anything to justify their expensive consultants’ fee, a charge the minister made against him, and he pointed out that had he only been interested in the fee he would have opted for a “cells and bells” (the traditional instruction classroom) approach as that is still what many people want schools to be and seems to cause less waves.
“We don’t design those kinds of schools where children are treated like cattle; we design spaces where all children are encouraged, motivated and inspired to learn,” he said. “We designed schools here where Caymanian children could grow and succeed instead of continuing to fail by repeating the mistakes of the past.”
Anglin’s dismissal of the design of the schools comes as no surprise to Nair, who says the current minister is, like many other people, stuck in the past image of what a school should be and is afraid to embrace the change.
Nair noted, however, how odd it is that in every other aspect of our lives we recognize that the environments need to be modern. He said people seem to expect teachers to do their work in dated environments, despite the phenomenal changes already taking place in education. He said that while people would never expect the pilot of a modern aircraft to land that plane on a runway designed for a small plane for a bygone era, we expect our teachers to educate our children in spaces designed in the 1950s.
“There are 20 different ways that we learn,” Nair said. “Standing at the front of the class and lecturing is only one of them. Our schools are designed to allow teachers to utilize the other 19 ways and whatever it takes to inspire students to learn these learning communities can facilitate that.”
Nair noted that it often takes teachers time to understand the spaces and how they can utilize them but once they have taken on the infinite possibilities they present, he said, no one ever wants to return to the cells of the past. However, the designer has warned that Cayman is heading into the past if it undermines the design principles that underpin the new high schools and return to a system that has been demonstrated to fail instead of embracing the future, which hesays has been proven to work.
Commending the previous minister for having not just a vision of a better future for Caymanian students but for being willing to take the risks to turn around the past failures, Nair said he truly hoped that the real purpose of the new schools to inspire children to learn can be saved.
WB restaurant robbed again
(CNS): A small restaurant and coffee shop in West Bay was targeted by robbers on Tuesday night a mere two weeks after an earlier robbery at the same place. Police said that just before 9:30pm last night (1 February) two masked men entered Tim Buc Tuu restaurant on Town Hall Road, West Bay armed with what appeared to be a handgun. The robbers threatened restaurant staff before fleeing the scene via the rear door with a sum of cash. The suspects are described as being around 5ft 10 inches in height and wearing dark clothing. They both had their faces covered. No shots were fired and no-one was injured in the incident. The restaurant was also victim to two robbers on 15 January when robbers also threatened staff and made off with takings and tips. (Photos Dennie Warren Jr)
This is the sixth armed robbery of 2011, less than five weeks into the year, and comes in the wake of police crime statistics that revealed some 64 robberies were committed during 2011.
Anyone who was in the area at the relevant time and witnessed the robbery or the men running off from the scene should contact West Bay police station on 949 – 3999 or the confidential Crime Stoppers number 800-8477 (TIPS).
Meanwhile, fire examiners are investigating the circumstances surrounding a fire in a car which occurred around 8pm yesterday night while it was parked in the Compass Centre car park. The car’s engine is believed to have been on fire and firemen removed the gas tank after putting out the smouldering fire in the vehicle.