Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s dis­clo­sure in Par­lia­ment this week that po­lice of­fi­cers at some sta­tions have been lock­ing their doors to hide from crim­i­nals cre­at­ed enough of an alarm to war­rant a de­nial from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the com­mis­sion­er in­sist­ed that the doors of po­lice sta­tions are al­ways open “even in the face of im­mi­nent dan­ger.”

We are now left with con­tra­dict­ing in­for­ma­tion from two of the high­est of­fice­hold­ers in the fight against crime—the Prime Min­is­ter, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), and the com­mis­sion­er, as head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Clear­ly both ac­counts can­not be true.

Dr Row­ley made it known dur­ing Mon­day’s de­bate on the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) that his in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter came as a re­sult of his po­si­tion at the helm of the NSC. And since the top cop is al­so a mem­ber of the NSC, one would have sur­mised that she and the Prime Min­is­ter would be at one on the is­sue. Clear­ly, Hare­wood-Christo­pher is not the source of Dr Row­ley’s in­for­ma­tion on this oc­ca­sion. 

Need­less to say, while we recog­nise that as head of the NSC Dr Row­ley would be privy to in­for­ma­tion from oth­er units, it ap­pears that he did not raise this par­tic­u­lar con­cern with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice be­fore bring­ing it to the coun­try via Par­lia­ment.

Whether due to over­sight or an­oth­er rea­son, the re­sult of the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment was to fur­ther di­min­ish the im­age of the po­lice ser­vice in the eyes of the gen­er­al pub­lic. It al­so ex­posed a trou­bling dis­con­nect be­tween his of­fice and that of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, which sim­ply does not au­gur well for pub­lic con­fi­dence in the NSC.

Whether Dr Row­ley was right to use the floor of Par­lia­ment to share such na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence in the midst of a run­away crime sit­u­a­tion is de­bat­able.

While it is of­ten said that ac­knowl­edge­ment is the first step to fix­ing a prob­lem, from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s ac­count, we’re told that no such prob­lem ac­tu­al­ly ex­ists, and there­fore, no such fix is need­ed at this time. This means Dr Row­ley’s dis­clo­sure could on­ly do more harm than good.

Mean­while, as the coun­try waits for these two lead­ers to get their sto­ry straight, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the TTPS is tak­ing an­oth­er beat­ing. 

The fact that crim­i­nals re­cent­ly chose to car­ry out their mur­der­ous acts in front of a po­lice sta­tion tells us that whether the doors are open or closed, the crim­i­nals have no re­spect for the po­lice.

Their mes­sage is that they con­sid­er them­selves more pow­er­ful than the law—some­thing we more as­so­ciate with nar­co states than with law-abid­ing ones.

Yet, with the re­cent im­po­si­tion of the SoE, both the Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice have sought to send a strong mes­sage that they’re not pre­pared to let crim­i­nals have the up­per hand.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try is on the side of the law, de­sirous of long-last­ing pos­i­tive ef­fects when the SoE is done.

The com­mis­sion­er’s de­fence of her troops on this con­tentious mat­ter can mo­ti­vate them to push on, but we has­ten to add that where ev­i­dence of neg­a­tive be­hav­iour is un­cov­ered un­der her watch, she must al­so act de­ci­sive­ly.