A typical day for the territory’s 13 newest police officers starts at about 4:30 a.m. While most residents sleep, the recruits hit the streets in all white for physical training, which consists of running laps or jogging to Sea Cows Bay and back.
After their workout, recruits return to the barracks – their home for at least five days a week and some weekends – and get ready for the day. Chief Instructor Sergeant Westmore Jeffers inspects the recruits each morning before the group heads to the Marine Centre at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College, where they spend the day attending lectures about law enforcement.
Most of the material is taught by Mr. Jeffers or co-instructor Sergeant Beverly James, but the recruits also get guest lectures from officers on special assignments like the Scenes of Crime Unit, or the “out station” that works from sister islands.
The afternoon sees the recruits returning to the Road Town Police Station, where they typically practise drills until it gets dark. The recruits’ evening hours are devoted to bunk inspections, studying and preparing assignments for the following day.
The long days aren’t easy, but they push recruits like Constable Rolando Codner, 21, to develop a keen focus.
“We have to be focused and keep our minds on what we have to do,” Mr. Codner said. “Sometimes we’ll be in class and we’re really drained, but we just have to focus to get that lesson.”
All the work is well worth it for Constable Jermaine Brewley. The 24-year-old said he has wanted to be a police officer since he was a child.
“I always wanted to be a police officer,” he said, adding that he’s already learned a lot and seen himself improve during physical training.
“It’s actually very exciting,” Mr. Brewley said.
Mr. Jeffers said this group of recruits is bright and hardworking.
“It’s a good batch: They’re very interactive, easy to teach,” said Mr. Jeffers, who previously spent two years teaching at the Regional Police Training School in Barbados.
Barbados school
Until now, VI recruits would go to the Barbados school for the full six months of their training, which posed a serious challenge for some aspiring officers.
“Some of them, for family reasons, they couldn’t do the long stay away,” Mr. Jeffers said.
The current class includes several parents.
Holding the training courses at the college has been in the works for some time, Mr. Jeffers said.
“Then last year, [Police Commissioner David] Morris approached me and asked, ‘Can it be done?’” he said.
Mr. Jeffers knew that with the resources available locally, the course could be done at least as well as it was in Barbados.
So he got to work on the curriculum. It follows the Barbados programme generally, with inclusions from other jurisdictions including Bermuda, Australia and Canada.
Mentors
A key new addition to the curriculum is a six-week field period, during which new officers will be paired with a mentor who is a veteran police officer.
“They’re actually going to go out on the street,” Mr. Jeffers said. “It’s a mentorship programme, which is a big advantage.”
At the end of that period, he explained, the recruits will get a detailed report from their mentor about their strengths and weaknesses.
“So at the end, they will be a more well-rounded officer,” Mr. Jeffers said, adding that since the recruits and the mentors will stay in the territory, the relationship can continue after the formal training period is over.
College partnership
The college was happy to accommodate the force, as local police training provides the type of workforce development that the college’s Centre for Professional Development and Community Education strives to offer, said Dana Lewis-Ambrose, who heads the centre.
“This is giving local persons in particular an opportunity at getting into the police force and to see it as a career,” Ms. Lewis-Ambrose said.
She added that having the recruits learn policing here has other benefits as well.
“They can be taught examples or given scenarios or situations which are very applicable to the local surroundings that they’ll be operating in,” she said.
Some of the recruits have been waiting to join the force for more than two years, said Constable David Nibbs, 26.
“I was one of them who was always on their back: every day, every day going to the office, trying to ask what’s the progress and what’s going on,” Mr. Nibbs said.
He and the other recruits had to pass a suitability test, a physical exam that assessed their strength and stamina, a preliminary interview, and a formal interview with a high-ranking officer. Mr. Nibbs was interviewed by Mr. Morris.
The former vector control officer said joining the police force is his way of making a positive difference in the territory.
“I like to say crime is like a cancer, and we as police officers are the cancer-fighting cells,” Mr. Nibbs said. “As a young BVIslander, I wanted to be one of those cancer-fighting cells.”
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