By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

ASSISTANT Commissioner of Police Kendal Strachan has been appointed chief of security at the Willie Mae Pratt School for Girls, a move his lawyer says he intends to fight.

ACP Strachan is among eight senior police officers who were directed to take vacation leave in March. The Minnis administration claimed that was part of a policy to prevent officers from accumulating so much vacation time that they had to be paid substantial sums when they reached retirement age.

However, five of the senior officers did not have enough accumulated vacation to last them into retirement. ACP Strachan is the first whose leave has ended. His attorney Wayne Munroe, QC, said he received a letter on Monday informing him of his transfer.

“He doesn’t accept that that action is proper,” Mr Munroe said. “He sought legal advice and we are considering how to handle the matter.”

Mr Munroe said it is insulting and disrespectful for an assistant commissioner to be made chief of security at a government agency.

“First of all, let’s assume you can’t reduce somebody’s pay and benefits,” he said. “Do you really need that highly paid a chief security officer? Who was the previous chief security officer and what did they make so we can understand the salary scale for such a position?

“Furthermore, the assistant commissioner is a rank above the superintendent. Superintendents tend to be in charge of entire divisions; for example, they are in charge of the eastern division which includes division headquarters, the girls’ schools, the boys’ school, the prison and all the surrounding communities. So you are going to put a senior man in charge of a school in a division that is headed by his junior? That’s just dumbness and sheer dishonesty.”

Mr Munroe said officers cannot be transferred against their will. He cited a case he brought in 2011 involving former Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Cheryl Grant-Thompson, who is now a Supreme Court justice.

Mrs Grant-Thompson was promoted to deputy law reform and revision commissioner against her will, a decision the court reversed.

“That’s a case where the government ended up paying us close to half a million in costs for,” Mr Munroe said.

Furthermore, he said the leave ACP Strachan took can’t be construed as vacation leave because the officer never applied for vacation.

“In the service,” he said, “to be on vacation you have to submit a form and have it approved. That didn’t happen here. When you’re told to go home, that’s administrative leave which doesn’t reduce the amount of vacation you are owed, so in reality, he still has as much vacation leave now as he had in March.”

From the Department of Correctional Services to the police and defence forces, officers’ anger and frustration at the government’s leave policy has been a running theme this year.

Two deputy commissioners at the Department of Correctional Services sued the government in May, alleging they were forced to take vacation leave to facilitate the appointment of Charles Murphy, their junior, as commissioner of corrections.

Last month, former deputy commander of the defence force Samuel Evans accused the administration of disingenuously applying its vacation leave policy to him, saying the policy was less about fiscal prudence than about sidelining him and others so the government could form its preferred leadership teams.

Mr Munroe said the folly of the government’s action was illustrated in Police Commissioner Anthony Ferguson’s admission to the Nassau Guardian on Monday that the murder rate increased when Hurricane Dorian strained police resources.

“If you admit that you have a lack of resources because a hurricane caused you to redeploy resources,” Mr Munroe said, “then why have you sent Clayton Fernander on vacation leave and didn’t return him to assist? How could you have afford to have Ken Strachan, a man the government paid to get trained by the FBI and all across the world with respect to firearms, on leave and not helping secure the country?”

Mr Munroe said the matter raises serious concerns about the independence of law enforcement agencies under the present administration.

“These fellas do not understand the importance of institutions,” he said. “The police force is supposed to be impartial and independent. When you see what amounts to be political interference in the Frank Smith and the Shane Gibson trials and then you look at what they are doing now, one has to be concerned about the serious politicisation of the police force.”