Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has re­ceived low marks from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers af­ter she was ques­tioned by Par­lia­ment ‘s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on Wednes­day.

On Wednes­day the CoP and her ex­ec­u­tive team ap­peared be­fore the Par­lia­ment’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty over­sight team to speak about the an­ti-crime strate­gies im­ple­ment­ed and be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Com­ment­ing on Hare­wood’s-Christo­pher’s rev­e­la­tions dur­ing the ses­sion yes­ter­day, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal, who was on the JSC pan­el, said, “The meet­ing was a rude awak­en­ing—it was star­tling that not a sin­gle tar­get set by the TTPS to re­duce vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty was achieved in 2023.

“The ef­fect is a run­away crime spree! Just (yes­ter­day) in my con­stituen­cy, a hus­band and wife who sell dou­bles for a liv­ing were the vic­tims of a bru­tal home in­va­sion, as­sault, rob­bery and shoot­ing.

“The TTPS can do much bet­ter but not un­der the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of Kei­th Row­ley and Fitzger­ald Hinds. They of­fer no lead­er­ship, vi­sion and dri­ve. On top of the PM’s dis­as­trous lead­er­ship is the woe­ful per­for­mance of the TTPS that pub­licly ad­mit­ted to hav­ing failed to meet all 11 set tar­gets for 2023 by way of re­duc­ing crime and law­less­ness. Row­ley’s calami­tous lead­er­ship and the poor re­sults an­nounced by the Com­mis­sion­er leave cit­i­zens even more vul­ner­a­ble against brazen, pow­er­ful­ly armed crim­i­nals.”

Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said he was dis­ap­point­ed at the CoP’s pre­sen­ta­tion.

“Our sec­tor would like to have seen clear con­cise lead­er­ship and com­ments from the Com­mis­sion­er. There­fore, it leaves a lot to be de­sired based on what we’re seek­ing. We’d like to see the very re­al crim­i­nal threat treat­ed with the grav­i­ty the sit­u­a­tion re­quires.

“There’s a clear and present threat of home in­va­sions and armed rob­beries, in­clud­ing in­ci­dents in the last year of cul­prits wear­ing po­lice uni­forms. There’s a lot of clam­our­ing in the in­dus­try—re­tail and sup­ply—for a clear pol­i­cy on Firearms Users Li­cences, es­pe­cial­ly on how TTPS is go­ing af­ter gangs and threats.”

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce (GFCC) pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said they were ex­pect­ing more from the CoP at the ses­sion.

“We thought we’d have heard some­thing more pos­i­tive at the JSC meet­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that didn’t hap­pen. The Com­mis­sion­er has to send a stronger mes­sage on plans for 2024 based on the re­sults and TTPS’ per­for­mance in re­cent years,” Singh said.

“We ex­pect with her ex­pe­ri­ence at TTPS’ helm, she should have bet­ter strate­gic plan­ning process­es, set­ting tasks, what’s ex­pect­ed of of­fi­cers and us­ing De­fence Force re­sources. The pub­lic an­tic­i­pates re­sults. T&T’s threat­ened by crim­i­nal el­e­ments which are in the mi­nor­i­ty to the pub­lic. Some­thing must be done.”

UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly was al­so un­hap­py with what the CoP de­liv­ered to the JSC.

“I’m ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed by the CoP’s per­for­mance at the JSC. This isn’t the first time that she’s dis­played a lack of lead­er­ship, which T&T needs and de­serves. She was woe­ful­ly un­pre­pared to an­swer straight­for­ward, rea­son­able ques­tions and she there­fore con­tin­ues to fail to in­spire trust by way of her lead­er­ship.

“It gives me no plea­sure to say gross in­com­pe­tence ap­pears to be the lat­est strain of virus to be con­tract­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er, hav­ing spread from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, the Prime Min­is­ter, and the rest of the PNM Gov­ern­ment. T&T’s suf­fer­ing from a lack of lead­er­ship on the crit­i­cal is­sue of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

Mean­while, for­mer UNC MP Vas­ant Bharath ex­pressed con­cern on crime—and Car­ni­val—es­pe­cial­ly, say­ing, “Af­ter the Gov­ern­ment’s hand­picked CoP has ad­mit­ted to miss­ing every sin­gle tar­get for de­tec­tion and re­duc­tion of mur­ders, vi­o­lent crimes and firearms re­trieval with the laugh­able ex­cuse that the tar­gets were ‘ex­ag­ger­at­ed’.”

Cit­ing the T&T Guardian’s re­port on Car­ni­val band­lead­ers lament­ing the neg­a­tive im­pact of crime on op­er­a­tions and cus­tomers, Bharath said, “This sums up the state of gov­er­nance in T&T. Their com­ments should be cause for great con­cern to the Gov­ern­ment, as Car­ni­val, tout­ed as the great­est show on earth, is a sig­nif­i­cant earn­er of much need­ed Forex. It’s shock­ing Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell asked what ‘ev­i­dence’ bands used to sup­port their ar­gu­ment.”

He added, “Mr Min­is­ter, maybe you’re un­aware the mur­der count (yes­ter­day) was 43? ... Dead­ly home in­va­sions are ris­ing. Crim­i­nals are brazen­ly op­er­at­ing against a ter­ri­fied pop­u­la­tion. Coun­tries have is­sued ad­vi­sories on T&T’s crime. Still un­con­vinced?”