Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Months af­ter he in­ter­act­ed with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as one of her sub­or­di­nates, for­mer se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent of po­lice and cur­rent Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der met with his for­mer boss again yes­ter­day. This time, how­ev­er, it was to dis­cuss her re­turn to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, af­ter she was cleared of wrong­do­ing in the on­go­ing Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) probe.

Alexan­der met with Hare­wood-Christo­pher at his Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice, short­ly af­ter it was re­port­ed she would be re­in­stat­ed as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia short­ly af­ter the meet­ing, Alexan­der de­scribed their in­ter­ac­tion as cor­dial, al­though he was now in a role of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty over the TTPS.

Alexan­der said there were no hard feel­ings to­wards Hare­wood-Christo­pher and his main fo­cus now was the well-be­ing of the na­tion.

“Roles might change but the re­spect re­mains the same and I be­lieve in that. At no stage I felt any bit­ter­ness to­wards Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher and the con­ver­sa­tion was quite good,” Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia.

“I would nev­er have an is­sue with Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher, no mat­ter what the cir­cum­stances were be­fore. It’s wa­ter un­der the bridge. That time has come and gone and it’s time to move for­ward.”

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee last Jan­u­ary, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards ques­tioned Hare­wood-Christo­pher about in­con­sis­ten­cies in ad­vice and mes­sages shared on the Be­yond the Tape pro­gramme, which was host­ed by Alexan­der on be­half of the TTPS at the time. Hare­wood-Christo­pher, in re­sponse, said the pre­sen­ter (Alexan­der) at times made re­marks “averse to the thoughts of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.” Alexan­der was lat­er re­moved as the host.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s meet­ing with Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Alexan­der said the de­ci­sion of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to clear her of the charge was dis­cussed, as well as her per­son­al well-be­ing. He said he sought to as­sure her the mat­ter would be dealt with fair­ly and with trans­paren­cy but stressed they were await­ing a re­in­state­ment let­ter from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) to con­firm her re­sump­tion of du­ty.

Asked what the next course of ac­tion would be once the let­ter was re­ceived, Alexan­der sim­ply said, “Let us re­ceive the doc­u­ment first and then we’ll go for­ward in terms of how we treat with that.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son, urged po­lice of­fi­cers to up­hold pro­fes­sion­al­ism when Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­turns to of­fice.

Dick­son said he was in con­tact with Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who in­formed him that she would be vis­it­ing her of­fice at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing on Sackville Street yes­ter­day.

Asked if he an­tic­i­pat­ed there would be any awk­ward or un­com­fort­able in­ter­ac­tions be­tween Hare­wood-Christo­pher and sub­or­di­nates who may have had a role in in­ves­ti­gat­ing and ques­tion­ing her, Dick­son said the first pri­or­i­ty of all of­fi­cers should be to main­tain a cer­tain stan­dard of pro­fes­sion­al­ism but ad­mit­ted it may be more dif­fi­cult.

“I can on­ly say that we as an or­gan­i­sa­tion must main­tain a lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and in all that we do, we have rules, reg­u­la­tions, de­part­men­tal or­ders and guide­lines which af­fect our dai­ly de­liv­ery of ser­vice in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly.

“Truth be told there might be some awk­ward­ness be­cause we’re deal­ing with hu­man be­ings, but at the end of the day, pro­fes­sion­al­ism should trump any awk­ward­ness be­cause we all have a des­ig­nat­ed role and pur­pose to per­form and should go about it from that lens and no oth­er lens.”

Dick­son main­tained that the mat­ter was not “han­dled the best” and hoped stake­hold­ers had learned from their “mis­steps,” es­pe­cial­ly in mat­ters re­lat­ing to high of­fice­hold­ers.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was de­tained at her of­fice at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing on Jan­u­ary 30, for ques­tion­ing in re­la­tion to her pur­port­ed in­volve­ment in the unau­tho­rised trans­fer of two AX-2 sniper ri­fles to the SSA. She was re­leased on Feb­ru­ary 1 with­out be­ing charged.

On Sat­ur­day, DPP Roger Gas­pard not­ed that while ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by in­ves­ti­ga­tors was enough to con­sid­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher a sus­pect, it was not enough to lay charges against her.