By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE manpower audit report of the Royal Bahamas Police Force has rekindled bitterness in police officers who feel they were wrongfully overlooked for promotions in 2014 and 2017.

The report may even have legal implications.

Constable Delmar Taylor, an officer passed over for promotion in 2014 and 2017, was already seeking damages through a lawsuit that alleges last year’s entire promotion exercise was unfair.

His attorney, Bjon Ferguson, said the manpower report, which features the government’s own admission of flaws in the promotion process, may be relevant to his case.

The report criticized the 2014 and 2017 promotion exercises. It was especially critical of last year’s election eve exercise in which 851 officers were promoted.

Researchers concluded the process was so flawed officers may or may not have been promoted justly and those overlooked may have been unfairly ignored.

One Family Island corporal said yesterday he was overlooked in 2014 and is no longer eligible for promotion because he has spent more than 25 years below the inspector rank.

He wonders if he was unfairly sidelined because of the flaws revealed in the report.

“Knowing the sacrifices me and my family made only to not get promoted and now this, it hurts,” he said. “I’ve worked hard. I’ve been in the hospital, I’ve been shot at, everything you can imagine has happened to me and my family since working on the Family Islands and they didn’t promote me.”

The officer claimed he passed the RBPF’s development course and police proficiency examinations –fundamental requirements for promotion – but was still ignored while others who allegedly failed the exams got ahead.

He said he regrets not taking legal action when he had the chance.

“We weren’t armed with proper evidence to proceed to court,” he said. “We felt deprived that we didn’t have an opportunity to make our case.”

A female officer told The Tribune she was last promoted in 2007. She said the report’s revelations about the recent promotion exercises are “grossly disturbing”.

“It doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth because I’m a young woman already on pension yet the report said the Force had room for more inspectors,” she said. According to the report, 107 more inspectors are necessary to help the RBPF meet its demands.

“I’ve watched people I wrote on now get two, three ranks above me,” the female sergeant said.

“People out here getting promoted but barely off probation but I got my first promotion after 14 years,” she added.

Despite the report’s criticisms, Former Minister of State for National Security Keith Bell yesterday defended the recent promotion exercises.

He said the report’s conclusions are an attack on former Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade.

The report said Mr Greenslade helped interview officers as he sat on the Promotion Board despite an RBPF policy granting that role to the Deputy Commissioner of Police. The report also said no selection board was established prior to the establishment of the Promotion Board, a deviation from established policy.

But Mr Bell said commissioners have the “unfettered discretion to promote suitably qualified candidates”.

“After a commissioner issues a Force Order inviting people to apply for promotion, a selection board is established consisting of superintendents or other senior officers chosen by the commissioner,” he said. “That board processes applications and conducts interviews and makes recommendations to the commissioner based on the interview process. The Promotion Board is then established. But what has happened over the years is we’ve had these selection boards where people would go before them on a number of occasions and were not successful because there are so many people eligible for promotion. The commissioner already has a list of such people who qualify to be promoted so it is in his absolute and unfettered discretion to choose persons who are suitably qualified for promotion with or without putting a selection board in place.”

Mr Greenslade, now the High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, did not respond to The Tribune’s request for comment yesterday.

Nonetheless, Mr Bell addressed the report’s criticism of the “disturbing” conduct of last year’s candidate interviews, a process in which people were asked vacuous questions before being dismissed from the interview room.

He said: “I was a constable in 1985 and went to the College of The Bahamas in 1992, got my Associates Degree in criminal justice and applied for promotion 11 years later. When I went to the selection board they asked me what I came for. They said, ‘Bell, why you here?’ They said, ‘we know who you are, we know your qualifications, come out of here. The interview lasted for two minutes. Why? What is there to interview when you know the quality of the candidate already? These interviewers are senior officers who know many candidates beforehand.”

Asked why the interview is mandatory given this, he said: “I won’t attempt to answer that question. I sat on the selection board before and when certain people were brought in I said, ‘why are we bringing in these people? Why waste our time? It should be at the discretion of the lead officer to interview someone, not a mandatory part of the process.”

Mr Bell said: “I challenge anyone to find me one person who was promoted last year that didn’t deserve to be promoted. I served as a police officer before and if you left it up to me most police officers would get promotions.”