THE Police Civilian Oversight Authority (PCOA) will present its first-ever ‘Top of TOPS’ Station Award in the Transforming Our Police Service (TOPS) Competition this year.

The award, which is a new feature of the competition, will be presented at the TOPS awards ceremony on November 27, during Police Week.

Five contenders, each a previous Area Top Station winner, are vying for the coveted title, which will be conferred every six years.

Chief executive officer of PCOA Otarah Byfield Nugent told JIS News that the Top of TOPS Award will be presented after the completion of the competition in five area commands.

“This first cycle of the competition was from 2019 to 2023. We have inspected all the Top Station winners this year to determine the top performer of them all,” she said.

The five contending stations are Bluefields (Westmoreland Division), Area 1; Bamboo (St Ann Division), Area 2; Asia (Manchester Division), Area 3; Bull Bay (Kingston Eastern Division), Area 4; and Above Rocks (St Catherine North Division), Area 5.

These stations, the PCOA CEO said, represent the pinnacle of police performance in the areas inspected when they won the Top Station Award in their respective area commands.

Meanwhile, this year’s TOPS competition is focused on police stations in Area 2 (Portland, St Ann and St Mary) where the competition first started in 2019.

It will include the introduction of a new award category – Top Marine Outpost.

The inclusion of this award expands the scope of the TOPS competition to include a non-geographic formation, the Marine Division, of which there are outposts in each police division.

A special PCOA Leadership Legacy Award has also been introduced, which represents the commitment of the PCOA team to invest, in a tangible way, in a station commander and facility that has displayed exemplary leadership and commitment.

The other award categories are: Top Station; Top Prisoners in Custody (PIC) Station; Top Customer Service Station; Top Division; and the Dr Marshall Hall Award, which is given to the station or division showing the most improvement in the TOPS Re-inspection.

Byfield Nugent expressed enthusiasm about the competition’s growing recognition as well as the new sponsors that have come on board.