An­na-Lisa Paul

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Christo­pher may soon be pro­ceed­ing on ac­cu­mu­lat­ed leave.

How­ev­er, she has as­sured the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is in good hands as she cur­rent­ly stands at the helm, ably sup­port­ed by re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Deputy CoPs Ram­nar­ine Sama­roo and Curt Si­mon.

DCP Sama­roo is in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Sup­port, while DCP Si­mon is re­spon­si­ble for In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Christo­pher is cur­rent­ly hold­ing on for act­ing CoP Mc Don­ald Ja­cob, who is on va­ca­tion and sched­uled to re­turn to work on Jan­u­ary 20, 2023.

It is not known if Christo­pher’s va­ca­tion leave el­i­gi­bil­i­ty will over­lap with Ja­cobs’, as the days owed to her are still be­ing cal­cu­lat­ed by the Hu­man Re­source Branch.

Speak­ing dur­ing the TTPS me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Christo­pher said, “I want to as­sure you the TTPS lead­er­ship will al­ways be in­tact.”

In­di­cat­ing she is not daunt­ed by sit­ting in the hot seat as head of the TTPS at this time, Christo­pher de­scribed her week-long stint in the CoP’s chair so far as “in­ter­est­ing.”

Hav­ing served in the TTPS for the past 40 years, Christo­pher said, “It is not an im­pos­si­ble task.”

While not a bi­o­log­i­cal moth­er her­self, Christo­pher said women played an im­por­tant role in shap­ing and in­flu­enc­ing lives, adding, “As a mat­ter of fact, I think it is prob­a­bly the right time to have that fe­male lead­er­ship.”

She made a spe­cial ap­peal to fe­males who wore the ti­tles of moth­er, wife, sis­ter, daugh­ter, aunt, et cetera, to ex­ert their in­flu­ence over the men in their lives to get them to change their be­hav­iour.

“We hold po­si­tions of in­flu­ence. We can in­flu­ence the minds of all the young men who are bent on liv­ing a life of crime. We can in­flu­ence all those young men who are hired as shoot­ers. All these young men who dis­play a dis­re­spect for life.”

Flanked by her deputies, Christo­pher ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try re­mained fo­cused on the record mur­der count, which is fast ap­proach­ing the 600 mark.

But she im­plored every­one, in­clud­ing the most se­nior cit­i­zens, to re­flect on their con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety’s de­vel­op­ment this year and let this shape the out­look for 2023.

Re­mind­ing per­sons of the newest hot­line num­ber (736-TTPS) ac­ti­vat­ed five weeks ago for per­sons to pro­vide con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion and crime tips to her of­fice, Christo­pher said the “re­la­tion­ship phone” is her link to the pub­lic.

Asked how many calls had so far been re­ceived and if any of the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed had led to le­git­i­mate ar­rests, Christo­pher re­vealed, “Yes, five weeks...but no sig­nif­i­cant calls.”

She con­tin­ued, “That is why I am again ad­vis­ing the pub­lic that the num­ber is avail­able and you can rest as­sured your calls will be con­fi­den­tial, and you will def­i­nite­ly, def­i­nite­ly, get a re­sponse.”

Mean­while, Sama­roo pledged to con­tin­ue the good fight, not­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion was not just af­fect­ing cit­i­zens but law en­force­ment in terms of how in­ves­ti­ga­tions are done and the out­comes processed.

Prais­ing of­fi­cers for their tire­less work, he called on the pub­lic and me­dia to sup­port their ef­forts by high­light­ing both the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive.

“We want to bring back re­spect,” Sama­roo said.

“We want to re­con­di­tion our chil­dren’s minds...to an ex­tent where they them­selves will start to have re­spect for their fel­low be­ings, their el­ders, and the po­lice ser­vice.”

Say­ing T&T would be in chaos if there was no rule of law be­ing en­forced, he said, “We need to bring back re­spect for our po­lice of­fi­cers.”

He said if any sig­nif­i­cant strides were to be made to change minds and al­ter be­hav­iour now they “need to get to the small chil­dren.”

Not­ing the pub­lic’s fear re­gard­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion, Si­mon agreed there needs to be a change in at­ti­tude and mind­set by the pub­lic to­wards the TTPS, which he ad­mit­ted was not with­out its own im­per­fec­tions.

He said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion was en­deav­our­ing to bring back some san­i­ty to what can on­ly be de­scribed as a “loose sort of crim­i­nal horse out there.”

He said it was pos­si­ble, adding new ini­tia­tives, plans and de­signs aimed at bring­ing pos­i­tive change all around will be rolled out in the com­ing days .

And as Christ­mas draws clos­er, the TTPS hi­er­ar­chy said it had in­ten­si­fied its pres­ence on the streets, shop­ping malls and gro­ceries, so shop­pers would feel safe whilst go­ing about their busi­ness.

Christo­pher said with leave be­ing re­strict­ed for of­fi­cers dur­ing this pe­ri­od, it had served to bol­ster the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty of the TTPS and they were able to in­crease the num­ber of boots on the ground.