Shas­tri Boodan

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly yes­ter­day de­scribed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as lead­er­less as crime and the mur­der rate spi­ral out of con­trol.

The Op­po­si­tion MP, who spoke dur­ing a ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tion at his con­stituen­cy of­fice on Munroe Road, said the pop­u­la­tion be­lieved that Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob was out of the coun­try on va­ca­tion leave from De­cem­ber 8 to Jan­u­ary 21, but he was seen on Sun­day at the open­ing of the Process to Progress Life Cen­tre in Princes Town.

Re­call­ing that con­cerns had been raised about Ja­cob go­ing on va­ca­tion at a time when sta­ble lead­er­ship was need­ed for the TTPS, Ram­bal­ly said: “You have a sce­nario where the gov­ern­ment, through none oth­er than the Prime Min­is­ter, sab­o­taged the se­lec­tion process for the CoP, where­by you ought to have had an ap­point­ment to the sub­stan­tive po­si­tion of the CoP. The Prime Min­is­ter must have known that spi­ralling crime would be the in­evitable re­sult.

“Now what you are see­ing is a po­lice ser­vice that is lead­er­less, it is rud­der­less, it is di­rec­tion­less and you have a po­lice ser­vice with its of­fi­cers not know­ing what strat­e­gy they are fol­low­ing.”

Com­ment­ing on re­ports that the per­son cur­rent­ly act­ing as CoP, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, is due to go on leave short­ly, Rma­bal­ly called for bet­ter man­age­ment of the process of ap­point­ments to en­sure the top po­si­tions in the TTPS are filled.

“Mixed sig­nals are be­ing sent and the crim­i­nal el­e­ments are of the be­lief that they can do what­ev­er they want dur­ing this pe­ri­od and get away with it,” he said, adding that the mur­der rate is climb­ing quick­ly and may cross 600 be­fore the end of the year.