A great sigh of re­lief must have come over Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to the news that Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard had con­clud­ed that ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by the po­lice was in­suf­fi­cient to press crim­i­nal charges against her.

The coun­try knows the sto­ry of the light­ning fast and un­ex­pect­ed ar­rest and de­ten­tion of CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher, al­leged­ly for her in­volve­ment in the grant­i­ng of per­mis­sion to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) to im­port two high-pow­ered sniper ri­fles for use by the of­fi­cers of the non-com­bat agency.

DPP Gas­pard con­clud­ed that “the ev­i­dence present does not reach the re­quired thresh­old so as to lead to a crim­i­nal charge” against the CoP in his sum­ma­tion of the mat­ter. He, how­ev­er, not­ed that while the ev­i­dence against the com­mis­sion­er was not like­ly to achieve a con­vic­tion in a court of law, it was “suf­fi­cient enough to lead to her ar­rest as a sus­pect.”

The fi­nal de­ci­sion of the DPP came months af­ter her ini­tial ar­rest and de­ten­tion by the po­lice and her even­tu­al re­lease. Back then, Gas­pard gave in­struc­tions to the po­lice to re­sume and in­ten­si­fy their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to what was mere­ly an al­le­ga­tion against the CoP. But notwith­stand­ing the ad­di­tion­al time and space giv­en to the po­lice to car­ry out their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, they failed to un­earth com­pelling ev­i­dence against the com­mis­sion­er.

This mat­ter rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions of the in­ves­tiga­tive ca­pac­i­ty of the po­lice and the process to be adopt­ed be­fore ar­rest and charges can be laid against an in­di­vid­ual for crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing.

That this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter in­volved the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice height­ens the con­cern about the qual­i­ty of in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed and the hard ev­i­dence found against the most se­nior law en­force­ment of­fi­cer in the land.

If this has hap­pened against the CoP, what of the or­di­nary cit­i­zen with­out the pro­tec­tion of such an of­fice can very well be the con­cern of mem­bers of the pub­lic, who have com­plained for years about “po­lice set-ups.” On the sec­ond count, so to speak, what of the ap­pli­ca­tion of the process re­quired by law for the po­lice to gain the per­mis­sion and par­tic­i­pa­tion of the DPP in such a de­ci­sion to ar­rest, de­tain and be on the ready to charge the com­mis­sion­er for such an al­leged crime?

Even be­yond the stick­ing point of al­low­ing for the ar­rest and ques­tion­ing of CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher, her po­si­tion as CoP must sure­ly have been tak­en in­to deep con­sid­er­a­tion and con­sul­ta­tion with the DPP by the of­fi­cers, be­fore mak­ing even the ini­tial step of ar­rest.

Con­sid­er­a­tion must sure­ly have al­so been giv­en to the like­ly im­pact on the rep­u­ta­tion of not on­ly the CoP but the en­tire po­lice ser­vice. As it turns out, the ar­rest, de­ten­tion and the un­war­rant­ed stain of it all on the ca­reer of Hare­wood-Christo­pher must be very hurt­ful to some­one who has spent her ca­reer in the ser­vice with­out proven blem­ish.

It may be ar­gued that the will­ing­ness, even ea­ger­ness, to ar­rest their leader in­di­cates a great de­gree of in­de­pen­dence of the po­lice high rank. How­ev­er, the larg­er and more in­ter­rog­a­tive is­sue is their fail­ure to in­ci­sive­ly and com­pe­tent­ly do the in­ves­tiga­tive work re­quired be­fore barg­ing in on the CoP and ar­rest­ing her.

The re­al­i­ty is that a se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cer’s ca­reer has been un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly and un­fair­ly end­ed with­out the due dili­gence and fair­ness re­quired.