BARBADOS WILL SOON GET a Special Constabulary, an extension of the regular Police Force, as the country prepares for the advancing into Community Policing.
Senior police officers hinted yesterday that proposals for the new constabulary had not yet been finalised, or submitted to the authorities for approval but it was being considered as an essential component to Commissioner Orville Durant’s concept for community policing here.
The Special Constables – SCs as they will be known – will comprise ordinary civilians, who although wearing uniforms, will function as volunteers and will be required to do a tour of duty a week.
The Special Constables will bring Barbados in line with modern police thought, and its introduction here will make Barbados one of only a few Caribbean countries with a supplementary police force.
The Special Constabulary proposals here fall within the programme for a new era of policing in Barbados which starts with a “resident beat police” system on December 6.
The pilot programme will start with six policemen who will be confined to Central Police Station in Bridgetown, and assigned to various districts in the city, developing cordial relations with the public, and lecturing at schools, among other social activities, in the area.
Five will go to the Bridge and Harbour Police Station, and apart from District “A”, groups numbering between four and six will be posted to other rural districts during the experimental stage of the programme, which will end on April 1 next year.
At that time, the programme will be evaluated and expanded, if successful.
A juvenile liaison scheme, formulated and expected to be executed by the Police, will be unveiled in a couple weeks’ time and the Police Boys’ and Girls’ Club is to be developed to function in the police community programme.
The Royal Barbados Police Force Band is also to help in the planned public relations programme, sources disclosed yesterday.
First news of Durant’s proposed Community Policing programme was announced by the commissioner, a week after he was appointed to succeed Aviston Prescod as head of the 147-year-old force.
