Horses for courses

I am in a bit of a quandary.

My team has been offered a particular training course. At least 3 of the PC's want to do it.

Although the final decision is the governors, he's asked us skippers to say who we think should be top of the list.

How do we- how do I- do this? The governor's forwarded on all the latest stats for the team- the usual stuff of whatever the statmonkeys can access via their IT systems- so arrests, stop searches etc.

Now this is total anathema to me. I hate statistical comparison. I reckon that the available statistics that can be measured may equate to roughly 20% of our police work. The list of things that aren't statistically compiled is endless- death messages, accidents, sudden deaths, court appearances, spending an extra half an hour having a cup of tea with a victim. All this counts for nothing in the team performance indicators.

But now I'm in a position where I have to give someone a sought after course and be able to justify why. Suddenly, it becomes very easy to jump on the stats bandwagon and justify it like that.

But if I do, I suddenly become part of the system which I hated as a PC and do still now.

Any suggestions for alternatives gratefully recieved. Names out of a hat isn't really an option. One of the PCs who would like to do this course isn't really suited for it, certainly not as much as the other two, and I need to be able to justify somehow him not being the the first name.