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Caribbean Islands National Security
The Royal Grenada Police Force
After mid-1985, internal security in Grenada was the
responsibility of the Royal Grenada Police Force (RGPF). Although
the title of the organization is traditional, the force itself had
been reconstituted and its members retrained and reequipped since
the United States-Caribbean intervention of October 1983. In the
immediate wake of the action by the United States military and the
350-member Caribbean Peace Force (CPF), units of these forces
handled police and security duties on the island. The last of the
United States military police personnel departed Grenada in June
1985; the remnants of the CPF pulled out shortly thereafter,
leaving the new and inexperienced RGPF to fend for itself.
The RGPF has had a history of personal and political
manipulation in Grenada. Under Gairy, the authority and
professionalism of the force were undermined by the establishment
of personal paramilitary units (such as the infamous "mongoose
gang"), which served to intimidate Gairy's opponents and inhibit
free expression of political viewpoints on the island. After
Gairy's ouster in 1979, Bishop's PRG set about restructuring
Grenada's security system along with its governmental, political,
and economic systems. Under the PRG, the RGPF continued to exist
both in name and in fact--a level of some 350 was maintained --but
in practice, the RGPF yielded its responsibilities and its
jurisdiction to the People's Revolutionary Army (PRA), a
politicized force presumed to be loyal to Bishop and the PRG. Under
the Bishop regime, the RGPF was neglected in terms of manpower,
funding, training, and equipment. As was the case under the Gairy
regime, the police force enjoyed neither the confidence nor the
support of the Grenadian people.
In light of this repressive history, after October 1983 it
became clear to both foreign and Grenadian observers that the
establishment of an apolitical and professional police force was
essential for the development of a representative and pluralistic
system of government on the island. The most pressing need in this
regard was training. For the United States, meeting this need
presented a dilemma of sorts, for United States security assistance
to foreign police forces had been prohibited by the United States
Congress since the 1960s. Thus, some creative and cooperative
programs were required.
The interim Grenadian government solved the problem by
establishing an SSU, an elite eighty-member paramilitary force
within the larger RGPF. Apparently both the United States and the
leaders of other Caribbean nations had urged the Interim Government
to form such a group. The majority of the Caribbean leaders had
expressed interest in training similar forces of their own, which
eventually could be integrated into a regional security system (see
A Regional Security System, ch. 7). The expanded paramilitary
mission of the SSU made possible the provision of United States
funds through the Military Assistance Program and allowed for
training of Grenadian personnel by United States Army Special
Forces units.
The training of the RGPF was facilitated further by the
cooperation of the British government. After the initial objections
by the Thatcher government to the military intervention were
smoothed over, training and assistance to the RGPF constituted one
of the major British contributions toward the normalization of
affairs in its former colony. Although not overwhelming in terms of
numbers or expenditure, British security assistance was timely;
three British police advisers were at work on the island by early
1984. Training of RGPF recruits by the British advisers was
conducted on the island, mainly at Fort George. More extensive
training took place off the island, at the Regional Police Training
Center in Barbados (training at both sites was provided at British
expense).
The total training program consisted of three phases. Phase one
provided physical conditioning and basic skills for groups of
Grenadian recruits during a four-week course under the supervision
of United States military personnel. Phase one training also
provided an opportunity for instructors to identify those recruits
who would be most suitable for service in the paramilitary SSU. A
fourteen-week course in basic police procedure constituted phase
two for those trainees who had successfully completed the four-week
session; this phase was administered by British police advisers.
Most of the members of the RGPF underwent only the first two
training phases. For those who qualified, phase three provided
instruction in the more varied skills required for service in the
SSU.
At the completion of all training phases, the RGPF counted some
600 men and women among its ranks. Included in that total was the
eighty-member SSU. The domestic duties of the SSU included airport
security, immigration procedures, firefighting, and maritime
interdiction (through the Grenadian Coast Guard, also a part of the
RGPF). The SSU was available for peacekeeping duties in Grenada or
on neighboring islands under the auspices of the RSS.
The postintervention RGPF was envisioned as an apolitical force
performing purely domestic duties. The SSU, in addition to its
regional obligations, was also intended to function as a domestic
crowd control unit. In an effort to extend the outreach and
heighten the profile of the RGPF among the population, the Interim
Government of Nicholas Braithwaite expressed interest in reopening
community police stations closed by the PRG. The physical disrepair
of many of these stations forced the government to put this
proposal on hold. Whether or not the RGPF was planning to enhance
its community relations and increase its effectiveness through
regular patrolling of the island was uncertain, given the
traditional station-bound orientation of the force.
According to an early 1986 report in the Grenadian
Voice, the RGPF was considering the establishment of a reserve
force of volunteers who would receive police training and be
prepared for mobilization under emergency conditions (presumably in
case of natural disaster or generalized public unrest).<
h4>Civil and Political Unrest
Some three years after the violent events of October 1983, the
potential for serious political unrest in Grenada appeared to be
surprisingly low. Although various officials and members of the
government had cited the potential threat to stability from
disgruntled leftist elements, these pronouncements appeared to have
been made primarily to rally domestic political support or to
bolster requests for continued high levels of United States aid.
For example, in December 1986, following the announcement of death
sentences for fourteen of the eighteen defendants in the Bishop
murder trial proceedings, Blaize called for the mobilization of
SSUs from neighboring islands to reinforce the Grenadian SSU. The
prime minister, the police commissioner, and the local media cited
increased reports of gunfire around the island and a general
upswing in crime and violence as justification for the appeal. The
actual level of unrest seemed to be unknown, however, and the link
to the trial verdict appeared to be tenuous and speculative at
best.
To be sure, the dramatic actions of October 1983, generally
popular though they were among the Grenadian public, did not purge
the island of all dissident radical politicians or their
sympathizers. The continued existence of the NJM and the
establishment of the MBPM provided evidence that some Grenadians
still hewed to a hard leftist political orientation. However, the
lack of success by the MBPM at the ballot box in December 1984 plus
the NJM's failure to contest the elections at all revealed the
shallowness of popular support for these groups following years of
repression under the PRG and the days of extreme violence that
preceded the United States-Caribbean intervention.
Although the influence of Marxism-Leninism and its major
regional proponent, Cuba, on Grenadian politics has been a fairly
recent development, political violence has not been uncommon
throughout the island's history. Violence carried out by his labor
followers brought Gairy to prominence in 1951. The NJM coup of
1979, however, although justified by its participants as a response
to Gairy's brutal repression and exploitation, was political
violence of a new and different sort for Grenada. Whereas Gairy had
abused the system but always maintained its forms, Bishop and his
followers delivered the message that the forms themselves were
objectionable. The notion that power could be wrested by force and
maintained by ideologically justifiable repression is a legacy that
the PRG may have left to some younger members of the Grenadian
population.
Civil unrest in Grenada in the postintervention period was
minimal. Reports persisted that the crime rate had risen since
1984, and RGPF statistics did indicate increases in violent crime
in 1985 and 1986. The reliability of these official statistics was
questionable, however, because police work in Grenada was neither
painstaking nor very precise. In any case, opinion on the island
appeared to reflect increasing concern over the issue of crime.
Neighborhood watch organizations were being established,
representatives of the private sector were promising aid to these
groups as well as to the RGPF, and citizens were calling on the
government to take sterner measures.
Internal security did not appear to be a serious or pressing
concern for the Blaize government, despite the prime minister's
periodic invocations of the leftist threat (typified by the
overreaction to the Bishop murder trial verdict). Despite some
problems, most of which could be attributed to the islanders'
relative inexperience with a functional democratic system, the
return to parliamentary democracy appeared to be proceeding apace
in the late 1980s.
* * *
A number of books on Grenada have been published since 1983.
Understandably, most of them focus on the military intervention and
the PRG period. Two of the better products are Revolution and
Intervention in Grenada by Kai P. Schoenhals and Richard A.
Melanson and Grenada: Politics, Economics, and Society by
Tony Thorndike. Thorndike's is perhaps the more complete treatment,
providing good historical background to a detailed study of post-
1979 events. The best source for topical reporting on Grenada is
the Grenada Newsletter, produced in St. George's.
Specific health and education data are available in the Pan
American Health Organization's Health Conditions in the
Americas, 1981-84 and Program Budget, 1986-87, the
World Population Profile published by the United States
Department of Commerce, and the annual report of Grenada's Ministry
of Education. An understanding of Grenada's economic status may be
obtained from the World Bank's Grenada: Economic Report, the
annual Grenada Budget Speech, and annual reports from the
Caribbean Development Bank. (For further information and complete
citations, see Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1987
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