Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment that Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (COP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was re­as­sign­ing his three Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers (DCPs) and send­ing one of the 11 As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (ACP) on 16 months ac­crued va­ca­tion, would have sur­prised and shocked many.

Even more sur­pris­ing was Mr Gue­var­ro’s ex­pla­na­tion. He said the re-as­sign­ments were planned to co­in­cide with two key mile­stones: The DCPs’ first an­niver­sary in their re­spec­tive roles and his first 100 days as CoP.

Ju­nior Ben­jamin and Natasha George were ap­point­ed to the post of DCP in Feb­ru­ary 2024, while Suzette Mar­tin’s ap­point­ment as DCP was in March 2024. Mr Gue­var­ro him­self was ap­point­ed as CoP on June 18, which means his 100th day as T&T’s top cop will be on Sep­tem­ber 26.

It is strange, there­fore, that Mr Gue­var­ro would think it ap­pro­pri­ate to ex­plain the re-as­sign­ment of top po­lice of­fi­cers in terms of their first year on the job...and then get that wrong.

“It re­flects a struc­tured ap­proach to ex­ec­u­tive de­vel­op­ment,” the CoP said in a wide­ly dis­trib­uted voice note.

While it is with­in the re­mit of the CoP to as­sign and re-as­sign his forces as he sees fit, it is strik­ing that the shift­ing around of the DCPs and send­ing ACP Wayne Mys­tar on va­ca­tion leave comes at the height of a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Mr Gue­var­ro’s ex­pla­na­tion is that the leave of ju­nior of­fi­cers has been re­strict­ed as a re­sult of the SoE, but se­nior of­fi­cers have been al­lowed to go on va­ca­tion.

The CoP should dis­close the oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers who have been al­lowed to take va­ca­tion leave dur­ing the SoE.

Al­low­ing an ACP to ac­crue 16 months of va­ca­tion leave al­so seems to be a huge hu­man re­source fail­ing.

Still, in an SoE, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, with its new leader, should be at­tempt­ing to build es­prit de corps among the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,000 of­fi­cers un­der his com­mand. There is no bet­ter way to build uni­ty, loy­al­ty and ca­ma­raderie among a group of peo­ple than for all of them to be treat­ed equal­ly.

It is im­per­a­tive that the TTPS is fo­cused and uni­fied at this point, be­cause the SoE, which was ex­tend­ed for three months on Ju­ly 28, has a lit­tle less than six weeks to run. One of the im­por­tant ways in which the cur­rent SoE is dif­fer­ent to all sim­i­lar ac­tions, is that dozens of pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders have been is­sued so far, with over 50 peo­ple, in­clud­ing al­leged gang lead­ers, be­ing de­tained.

This is clear­ly an at­tempt by Gov­ern­ment to stamp out the pow­er and in­flu­ence of lo­cal gangs, whose dead­ly in­fight­ing and gun, drugs and peo­ple smug­gling have led to the con­tin­u­ing trend of mur­ders.

While the cur­rent SoE has co­in­cid­ed with a re­mark­able de­cline in the coun­try’s mur­der rate, which is down by 40 per cent for the year to date, that is not the best gauge of the ef­fi­ca­cy of this emer­gency pe­ri­od.

What would be a much bet­ter in­di­ca­tion of the suc­cess of the SoE, is if the mur­der rate con­tin­ues to de­cline af­ter the SoE ends. For that to hap­pen, the po­lice need to con­vert the in­tel­li­gence that re­sult­ed in the pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders in­to ev­i­dence that can con­vince the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to lay charges.

If not, the gang­sters and gang lead­ers who are now in­car­cer­at­ed will con­tin­ue with their mur­der­ous ac­tiv­i­ties when they are re­leased.