Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has ad­hered to the or­der of High Court Judge Christo­pher Sieuc­hand, and re­served two po­si­tions in the rank of As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACPs) pend­ing the out­come of a ju­di­cial re­view.

Yes­ter­day, the CoP pro­mot­ed eight ACPs al­though there are ten va­cant po­si­tions. The new ACPs are Wayne Mys­tar, Curt Si­mon, Richard Smith, Andy Tee­warie, Bri­an Sood­een, Anand Rame­sar, An­tho­ny Re­my and Rishi Singh.

The pro­mo­tion cer­e­mo­ny was held at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain.

In a me­dia re­lease, Hare­wood-Christo­pher con­grat­u­lat­ed the of­fi­cers, urg­ing them to help con­tin­ue to “build an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is com­pe­tent, ag­ile, ef­fec­tive, and pro­fes­sion­al.”

The pro­mo­tions came hours af­ter at­tor­ney Vashisht Seep­er­sad, who is rep­re­sent­ing act­ing ACPs Win­ston Ma­haraj and Sub­hash Ramkhelawan, sought an in­junc­tion to re­serve the two spots for his clients.

This move came a week af­ter he at­tempt­ed to stop the gen­er­a­tion of a mer­it list while the of­fi­cers chal­lenged the com­po­si­tion of a pro­mo­tion­al in­ter­view pan­el, which they ar­gued might have ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed their rank­ing on the mer­it list.

The hear­ing is sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 17 be­fore Jus­tice Joan Charles. In the in­ter­im, Charles grant­ed an in­junc­tion stop­ping Odyssey Con­sult­Inc Ltd (OCL), the com­pa­ny hired by the CoP to con­duct the in­ter­views, from gen­er­at­ing a mer­it list.

The of­fi­cers want to be re-in­ter­viewed, as they claimed they had a “frac­tious” re­la­tion­ship with a pan­el mem­ber which might have neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed their scores.

De­spite this, a mer­it list was gen­er­at­ed and sent to Hare­wood-Christo­pher on Wednes­day. On the list, Ma­haraj was ranked last of the 27 names while Ramkhelawan was ranked 22nd.

In seek­ing the im­me­di­ate in­junc­tion on Wednes­day night, Seep­er­sad ar­gued that Charles’ or­der was not ad­hered to. Seep­er­sad served Sieuc­hand’s or­der elec­tron­i­cal­ly at 12.42 am yes­ter­day and hand-de­liv­ered it at 8.14 am to the CoP’s of­fice.

In their orig­i­nal law­suit be­fore Charles, the two se­nior of­fi­cers asked for the in­ter­view score sheets of the par­tic­i­pants, and the as­sess­ment cri­te­ria used by OCL to gen­er­ate the mer­it list. Seep­er­sad first re­quest­ed the in­for­ma­tion from Hare­wood-Christo­pher but was de­nied, lead­ing him to file for the ju­di­cial re­view to be heard by Charles next week.

This is not the first time a TTPS pro­mo­tion process has been re­spond­ed to with lit­i­ga­tion. In Jan­u­ary, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing 93 po­lice of­fi­cers wrote to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) to probe Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s al­leged mis­han­dling of pro­mo­tions for over 2,000 con­sta­bles dat­ing back to 2009.

The let­ter was sent af­ter “a glitch” re­sult­ed in the er­ro­neous pro­mo­tions of 34 po­lice of­fi­cers to the rank of cor­po­ral.