Cab­i­net ex­tend­ed the con­tract of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for sev­er­al rea­sons, in­clud­ing a “good” per­for­mance re­view from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) plus an ex­pect­ed lack of sup­port by the Op­po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment for a new nom­i­nee, which would have left T&T with­out a CoP. So said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day af­ter Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment by the Cab­i­net to ex­tend Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract by one year.

Hinds, asked by Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view to give Cab­i­net’s rea­sons for ex­tend­ing the con­tract, said there were sev­er­al rea­sons ground­ing the de­ci­sion. He al­so elab­o­rat­ed on the ex­ten­sion of the CoP to the me­dia at a func­tion at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca late yes­ter­day.

Re­gard­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ex­ten­sion, Hinds said there “were a cou­ple of se­ri­ous and im­pos­ing con­sid­er­a­tions.”

These in­clude the law, the Con­sti­tu­tion, and Sec­tion 75 of the Po­lice Act, which per­mits the ex­ten­sion of an of­fi­cer.

“Sec­tion 75 was the pro­vi­sion that our grant­i­ng Madame Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher the ex­ten­sion for the past year was chal­lenged in the court.

“In ad­di­tion to that, you will re­call that Madame Christo­pher’s birth­day is May 14 ... to­day (Tues­day), and had we gone past mid­night last night by even a scin­til­la of time, her ap­point­ment as com­mis­sion­er by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, which the court up­held as the on­ly body en­abled to do so un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, would have ex­pired, and we would have im­me­di­ate­ly re­vert­ed to the un­wel­come cir­cum­stance of hav­ing a po­lice ser­vice with­out a sub­stan­tive of­fi­cer hold­er as com­mis­sion­er leader.”

He said that would have been an “un­de­sir­able” po­si­tion for the coun­try.

Hinds said the court had to in­ter­pret Sec­tion 75 of the act against the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“In the first in­stance, Jus­tice Rahim and the Court of Ap­peal found that it was quite prop­er, noth­ing ir­reg­u­lar ... not un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, but in keep­ing with what the law ex­pect­ed.”

The Gov­ern­ment, he said, is al­ways guid­ed by the law.

He said that two judg­ments by the court had made it quite clear that the CoP was al­ready ap­point­ed by the PolSC and the ex­ten­sion was mere­ly that. An ex­ten­sion of the ap­point­ment ...” he added.

Not­ing that Hare­wood-Christo­pher was ap­point­ed for a year, he in­di­cat­ed that if the pe­ri­od had been al­lowed to ex­pire, “We’d have gone back to the un­de­sir­able con­di­tion of not hav­ing a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in the post—some­thing this Gov­ern­ment has worked hard to avert since 2015.”

‘We act­ed in the widest, deep­est, and health­i­est pub­lic in­ter­est’

Hav­ing at­tained age 60, Hinds said, “Sec­tion 15 al­lows for an ex­ten­sion of her ser­vice by the PolSC.”

 Hinds said had they al­lowed the term of the ex­ten­sion to ex­pire, the Op­po­si­tion would have made a “hue and a cry and a stand about an ap­point­ment that would have had to go back to the Par­lia­ment.”

“We want­ed to en­sure the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was set with the lead­er­ship of a com­mis­sion­er for all times so her tenure would have as­sured that.”

As soon as the PNM Gov­ern­ment took of­fice in 2015, they trig­gered the process of writ­ing the PolSC to say that they should en­gage in the process of re­cruit­ing a sub­stan­tive CoP.

That de­ci­sion was chal­lenged in court.

He said the court de­cid­ed that the PolSC was the on­ly body that should have trig­gered such a process and amend­ed the or­der.

Hinds al­so cit­ed the Op­po­si­tion’s modus operan­di of re­fus­ing to sup­port Gov­ern­ment un­der­tak­ings in Par­lia­ment. He not­ed the UNC’s re­fusal to sup­port the re­cent Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ment Bill seek­ing to give the PolSC au­thor­i­ty to ap­prove act­ing ap­point­ments of a se­nior of­fi­cer, rather than com­ing to Par­lia­ment to do this every time a CoP is ab­sent for va­ca­tion, ill­ness, fam­i­ly or be­reave­ment pur­pos­es.

“They (UNC) re­fused to sup­port the bill! Point blank! So giv­en that re­cal­ci­trant pos­ture, we knew that had we al­lowed her term to ex­pire, a new ap­point­ment would have had to be made via the Par­lia­ment and we could an­tic­i­pate no sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion,” Hinds added.

Hind said that on April 12, 2024, the PolSC put out an ad­ver­tise­ment invit­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for the po­si­tion of CoP.

Based on ex­pe­ri­ence and com­mon sense, Hinds said, they knew that the process for a new CoP would have prob­a­bly tak­en be­yond six months.

He said the Gov­ern­ment did not want to re­turn to the un­ten­able po­si­tion of a Po­lice Ser­vice with no com­mis­sion­er.

“We even­tu­al­ly got one with a failed ex­per­i­ment, and then we got Mr Ja­cob, who served.”

Hinds said the law states “that you have to re­view the com­mis­sion­er’s ex­ten­sion ... it is for a max­i­mum of three years.”

But it is re­view­able every year.

‘We reached out to the PolSC ‘

Hav­ing fol­lowed the law, Hinds said they reached out to the PolSC, which had the man­date and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to “ac­cess her work dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the year ... that she served in the ex­ten­sion, and they re­spond­ed to us.”

The PolSC was asked if they had done a re­view of her per­for­mance.

“And if so, can you help us? What is your find­ing? They came back telling us, hav­ing looked at a num­ber of dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria, they came back telling us that her over­all rat­ing was good. So we knew that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, which ap­point­ed her, and we ex­tend­ed, and now want to con­sid­er a fur­ther ex­ten­sion.”

Hinds said, hav­ing as­sessed her per­for­mance in the last year, they found “that it was good.”

With that in mind, Hinds said, “We were more em­bold­ened to act in ac­cor­dance with the law and pub­lic in­ter­est. So it was a com­bi­na­tion of those fac­tors. But when we looked at their as­sess­ment of good, we re­alised that they would have reached out to sev­er­al stake­hold­ers, not the least the re­main­der of the ex­ec­u­tive, the lead­er­ship, or a sam­ple there­of of the Po­lice Ser­vice, from which a favourable rat­ing came.”

Hinds not­ed that oth­er stake­hold­ers would have weighed in. He said the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion was al­so in sup­port of her ex­ten­sion.

He added, “The com­mis­sion would al­so have tak­en in­to ac­count crime sta­tis­tics, which showed a re­duc­tion in some as­pects of crime, in­clud­ing mur­ders.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, the Cab­i­net’s con­sid­er­a­tion al­so in­clud­ed the fact that on April 12, the com­mis­sion opened the process for ap­pli­cants for the post of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

“And that is on­go­ing. From our ex­pe­ri­ence, it will take some time to make a nom­i­na­tion to the Pres­i­dent for our con­sid­er­a­tion. So in the mean­time, it was ap­pro­pri­ate to have a sub­stan­tive Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in of­fice, and for that rea­son, we ex­tend­ed Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract,” he added.

“We know now that the stake­hold­ers who they con­sult­ed found sat­is­fac­tion. We al­so know that not every mem­ber of the pub­lic is so mind­ed.”

He said we live in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try and opin­ions would vary.

“But we, the Gov­ern­ment, on the ba­sis of those facts, guid­ed by the law, tells con­fi­dent that we act­ed in the widest, deep­est, and health­i­est pub­lic in­ter­est.”

Hinds said all he can do is pro­vide sup­port and re­sources to the CoP and of­fi­cers to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion and make T&T safe.

Hinds wished Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her of­fi­cers well, for­ti­tude, and safe­ty “be­cause we are in­deed in a very cri­sis time with crime in the re­gion. Not just Trinidad.”

He promised the Gov­ern­ment would do all with­in its pow­ers to stem the flow of il­le­gal guns en­ter­ing our shores.

“All things con­sid­ered, we think we ar­rived at the right con­clu­sion, and we pray for a bet­ter fu­ture.”

Asked if the PolSC sub­mit­ted nom­i­nees for the post of CoP to the Pres­i­dent who in turn would for­ward it to Par­lia­ment, how it would be treat­ed, Hinds said, “That is go­ing to be a very rel­e­vant fac­tor ... a pow­er­ful new in­ter­ven­ing fact.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment would be oblig­ed to con­sid­er it “go­ing for­ward.”

“For me, to­day to say what the Cab­i­net will do then, I am not the Cab­i­net; I am just a part.”

Hinds opt­ed not to rate Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s per­for­mance when asked.