Susan Tamar Joanis, Cambridge, Ontario
Police Blunders Due to Youthfulness, Inexperience and Lack of Support

In many ways, both the strengths and weaknesses of the Haitian National Police (HNP) officers can be traced to their youthfulness. Their average age while in training was 24. They were enthusiastic, patriotic, brave, and genuinely seized of a desire to contribute in a meaningful way toward positive change for the country. They were also full of energy, innocence, and faith.

The police cadets were also, for the most part, very bright and well educated. Many of them had been trained as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and engineers, but had left those careers to participate in their country's first professional and politically independent police force. Their exuberance and earnest interest in learning were impressive. In a word, the cadets were for many of us working at the Training Center, inspiring.

Staff at the Training Center commonly referred to the cadets as "the kids." This was not intended to be condescending. The term arose to some extent from affection, but was in large part simply descriptive. Not surprisingly, there was a flip side to this generally positive characterization.

Immature is the defining word which comes to mind, and it was demonstrated in many ways. A childish desire to sport tiny pins showing the Canadian or American flag on their uniforms; readiness to adopt, pro forma, antagonisms toward the incoming class; and susceptibility to the seduction of perceived North American standards. This last was seen most clearly when one class went on strike because the students learned that they would be issued used weapons.

The youthful attraction to the "toys" they received, combined with a lack of understanding about an individual’s role as one member of a large organization, led to the disappearance of many handheld radios, bulletproof vests and even vehicles upon deployment to the field. It has also led, tragically, to a number of civilian fatalities and the force's reputation for being trigger happy.

Many of these problems, however, can also be traced to failings within the training program. Because of the political circumstances, the four-month training program each cadet was required to complete suffered from severe shortages of both time and money. This meant that much of the curriculum was inappropriate, many of the instructors were poorly chosen, equipment was insufficient and there was not enough time to provide essential technical training in the areas of firearms, driving and defensive tactics. Perhaps worst of all, the program planners were unable to maintain their original idea of having instructors spend four months in the field with the newly graduated and deployed agents.

Regardless of the time available, most of those who formed the original force could not be trained in their future organization's rules and regulations because a HNP manuel did not yet exist. The cadets were graduating into a police agency that had no veterans, no administration, no policies and procedures, no systems, no forms and no inventory.

In addition, most officers were deployed to stations with no running water, electricity, or telephone lines. Most officers had only one uniform for a six-day work week. This would not normally have been personally devastating for them, but during the training period they had become familiar with North American amenities and standards, both through actual experience and class lectures on the way things "should" be done. The officers were sent to communities where the general population, although perhaps wary, was anticipating the new force with high expectations. But others with money, influence, more experience and better guns were waiting for opportunities to sabotage and undermine the idealistic young recruits.

In hoping that the HNP will "make it," we must hope that the force’s strengths of energy, faith and desire for change will overcome its weaknesses: training deficiencies, dismal working conditions and at times overpowering difficulties of daily life on the job.

Joanis worked at the HNP Training Center from February, 1995 to January, 1996, where she coordinated the human rights training and managed the information and public relations department. She is currently a policy analyst at the Ontario Human Rights Commission.