The is­sue of last week’s ar­rest and sub­se­quent sus­pen­sion of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher was ven­ti­lat­ed yes­ter­day in both the Par­lia­ment and the High Court. Par­lia­ment rat­i­fied the ap­point­ment of deputy com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin as the act­ing CoP and ap­proved the nom­i­na­tion of as­sis­tant CoP Curt Si­mon as an act­ing deputy com­mis­sion­er.

A High Court judge re­fused to grant an in­junc­tion stop­ping the ap­point­ment of Mr Ben­jamin, but al­lowed Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher to chal­lenge her sus­pen­sion by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) as a re­sult of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, re­lat­ing to the im­por­ta­tion of two bolt-ac­tion ri­fles for T&T’s in­tel­li­gence en­ti­ty.

But a week in­to this mat­ter, the pub­lic is no clear­er on the le­git­i­ma­cy of the al­le­ga­tions against Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

What we know so far is that deputy CoP (In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions) Suzette Mar­tin led a team of of­fi­cers who de­tained, cau­tioned and ques­tioned Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher on the al­le­ga­tions last Thurs­day, and that the PolSC di­rect­ed her “to cease to re­port for du­ty and cease to dis­charge the du­ties of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice” on Fri­day.

It is al­so known that the in­ves­ti­ga­tors sought the guid­ance of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, who is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly en­dowed with the pow­er to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal charges in T&T. Mr Gas­pard ad­vised them to seek fur­ther in­for­ma­tion. The in­ves­ti­ga­tors then ap­proached Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), rel­a­tive to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pro­cure­ment of the two ri­fles.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was asked whether Hare­wood-Christo­pher or for­mer Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) head Roger Best had no­ti­fied the NSC about the SSA’s in­ten­tion to pro­cure the ri­fles and if so, whether it was ap­proved. The oth­er ques­tion asked was if Hare­wood-Christo­pher in­formed the NSC that she had ap­proved the SSA’s re­quest to pro­cure the ri­fles through li­censed firearm deal­er Luke Hadeed.

It is sur­pris­ing that those ques­tions are be­ing asked of the NSC and in par­tic­u­lar the Prime Min­is­ter, giv­en the fact that the CoP is the on­ly per­son un­der the law au­tho­rised to ap­prove firearm users’ li­cences (FULs) in T&T.

Giv­en every­thing that has been said about this shock­ing de­vel­op­ment, there are many peo­ple who would now ques­tion whether the ar­rest and sub­se­quent sus­pen­sion of the CoP is sim­ply about the pro­cure­ment of ri­fles that may not even be pro­hib­it­ed, mean­ing they can on­ly be sold to law en­force­ment agen­cies.

It is al­so note­wor­thy that it was Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley who de­liv­ered a full re­port on the SSA to Par­lia­ment on Ju­ly 3, 2024. In that state­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter out­lined that “the SSA had adopt­ed an un­ap­proved or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­sign/struc­ture and staffing, with­out the re­quired au­thor­i­ty of a de­ci­sion, ei­ther by the Cab­i­net, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil or the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

He told Par­lia­ment the SSA set up a high­ly trained and mil­i­tarised “tac­ti­cal re­sponse unit,” and that the for­mer SSA di­rec­tor “ini­ti­at­ed the pro­cure­ment of high-grade mil­i­tary bolt-ac­tion ri­fles, com­plete with the most mod­ern si­lencers, and oth­er ac­ces­sories,” be­fore the amend­ment to the SSA Act in No­vem­ber 2023, which al­lowed the agency to have and keep firearms.

In his com­ments, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so out­lined a pat­tern of fla­grant and cor­rup­tive abuse of the FUL regime.

It begs the ques­tion whether these state­ments have in­formed the TTPS’ in­ves­ti­ga­tions and if there is enough hard ev­i­dence to sup­port these claims.