Minister of Home Affairs weighs in on Police Commissioner’s performance

Minister of Home Affairs, Kareem Musa, also chimed in on the performance of the Police Commissioner and whether he has lost the confidence of his superiors, and whether this recent black eye for the department now warrants his resignation.  

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs: “When you look at your Commissioner of Police you have to look at results and I think that we have seen excellent results, excellent transparency from this Commissioner of Police and you can ask anyone out there in terms of who they feel is not just the most accountable but who is the most efficient not just against the criminals and the bad guys out there but even against his own and perhaps that may at times result in a reduction in morale but at the same time what our society is asking for is a restoration of confidence and trust in our police department and the only way that you can restore trust and confidence in your department is by taking action against those individuals who may have committed a wrong. And so he may come under criticism for that I don’t believe that that has resulted in this overall morale breakdown like you’re mentioning and so you will find situations where individual officers and in this case a civilian employee acted on their own. If you ask that person “Is it because of low morale that you went to discard that material ?” He’ll say “No.” He’ll just say “Well in here was smelling bad so I took it upon myself to take it to the garbage dump.” that is not acceptable and so I do not subscribe to your suggestion that the Commissioner has lost the confidence of the department.”

What the Police Minister, Kareem Musa, did concede to, is that there is work to do to reassure the public and rebuild its confidence in the department.  As a matter of fact, Minister Musa says changes are already being made internally. 

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs: “We have to have trust and confidence that the people at the top will make the requisite decisions to ensure that we restore that confidence that is extremely important. Police cannot carry out their functions, cannot carry out their duties if they do not have the support of the law abiding public. And so yes while it is important to take action against individuals who are not following procedure at the same time we have to restore that confidence and I know the commissioner will. We’ve already placed a sargent in charge of the exhibit room to ensure that things like this do not happen again because while it is that this civilian exhibit keeper discarded this material I’m sure he did not envision that this would have played out the way it did but in any event that is not an excuse and certainly like I said we have to take the necessary action to ensure that we build back that trust and confidence of the law abiding public.”