The present vetting system to recruit and hire police officers in the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force has come under heavy fire by newly appointed Commissioner of Police Mark Collins.
Commissioner Collins gave those remarks during his recent hearing with the ongoing Commission of Inquiry (COI) where raised his concerns on the existing vetting system within the force.
He said he will be pushing to have the force hire a vetting officer, who will be tasked with ensuring suitable persons are enrolled within his organisation
“I don’t think we vet and do enough background checks on officers transferring into the organisation or new recruits and one of the things that I have put in my Position Statement is the desire to recruit a recruitment officer/ vetting officer so we can be very clear about who we are recruiting, and making sure that they are a suitable individual to be a serving police officer,” Collins stated.
Vet officer will improve RVIPF professional standards
The commissioner believes the new special position along with his improved professional standards will help to fast-track internal investigations to rid the police force of untrustworthy police officers.
He said, “[It would] deal with things more robustly and in a timely fashion because depending on the allegation I get against someone I would want to do a severity assessment and look at suspending that individual, taking them out of front-line duties.”
Officers not taking current policies seriously
He said the new measures are needed as some of the officers are not taking the currently imposed UK Code of Ethics or Code of Conduct seriously.
“I think some get it, some understand it. As I said I need to be careful with how I phrase this. I got a lot of very good officers that are out there working over and above every day doing some fantastic work, I also got some other officers that I don’t think pay attention to any code of ethics, any code of conduct at all and those are the people I need to root out of the organisation,” the top cop explained.
Commissioner Collins had previously said that he has some major concerns about the honesty, business interest and the affiliation held by some of his police officers.