Veterans Say – By Kisean Joseph
Veterans Say Rank Promotions
Rank, promotions, and titles mean little if an officer does not love the people they serve first. That is the central message from two veteran female police officers whose combined service to Antigua and Barbuda spans 60 years.
Speaking with Observer Media, the officers offered a candid reflection on what they believe separates a good officer from a great one, and their answer had nothing to do with climbing the ranks.
“You must have a passion for the people that you serve,” one officer said. “That first, your servant.”
She described the kind of love required not as personal affection, but as a principled commitment to treating every person with dignity. “It is that kind of love where you say, that is a human being as well, and I want to treat them the way I want to be treated,” she said.
The officers were equally direct in their warning to young recruits. Entering the force with promotion as the primary goal, they cautioned, is a foundation built to collapse. They argued that officers driven by ambition rather than purpose will eventually falter because the work demands selflessness that self-interest cannot sustain.
“It can never be about you,” was the assertion.
Despite decades of service, she acknowledged that promotion never came her way. Rather than bitterness, she described a sense of deep fulfilment rooted in impact. “I got a lot of fulfilment in spite of not getting a promotion, because it was never my goal,” she said. “I felt like I was producing something. I was making a difference in someone’s life. And that is all I need.”
The officers also took aim at the weight placed on rank within the force. In their view, a title is only as meaningful as the person holding it. An officer, they argued, must define the role rather than be defined by it.
“You make the rank; the rank doesn’t make you. You have just given me a title, but I made that. I make it as strong or as weak.”
Their broader message was one of civic duty over personal ambition, a call to approach policing as an act of nation-building rather than a career ladder. They urged those entering the force to place themselves last, lead with love, and measure success not by bars and promotions but by lives changed.
After 60 years of combined service, both officers remain resolute: the badge is only as powerful as the heart beneath it.
