Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) mem­ber Mar­tin George says the han­dling of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to sus­pend­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher may trig­ger a law­suit.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, on the heels of the an­nounce­ment by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions that Hare­wood-Christo­pher had been cleared of wrong­do­ing in the mat­ter, George said her at­tor­neys may now have enough am­mu­ni­tion to mount a le­gal chal­lenge.

In a press re­lease on Sat­ur­day, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard cleared Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was ar­rest­ed in Jan­u­ary, say­ing the ev­i­dence against her was not suf­fi­cient to suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cute in the mat­ter in­volv­ing the pro­cure­ment of two sniper ri­fles for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

Com­ment­ing on the de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day, George said, “The pub­lic hu­mil­i­a­tion and em­bar­rass­ment which a per­son in the pub­lic eye suf­fers, lis­ten, no amount of mon­ey can re­al­ly com­pen­sate for that. I mean, for this to have been played out both na­tion­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as it did, one can imag­ine the ex­tent of the em­bar­rass­ment that she must have felt, and worse yet, for it to have been done by per­sons who were her ju­niors.”

He added: “There­fore, you have every bit of salt that you could rub in the wound, which would have been added there. So, there­fore, I would imag­ine that her­self and her at­tor­neys would def­i­nite­ly be look­ing at her op­tions in terms of some fur­ther le­gal ac­tion be­cause they would be ar­gu­ing and I would think that they would have some ba­sis to do so; they would be ar­gu­ing to say, well, look, hey, this was un­jus­ti­fied in the first place and this was high-hand­ed op­pres­sive ac­tion by the agents of the TTPS.”

George said from the on­set he had urged that a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion be done to en­sure the ev­i­dence was there to jus­ti­fy ar­rest­ing a po­lice com­mis­sion­er.

“I have been say­ing from the very get-go in this whole sce­nario, you have to en­sure that you at least have the fun­da­men­tals of the ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy your ac­tions.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the DPP’s de­ci­sion was for­mer PolSC chair­man Ramesh De­osaran, who said the ar­rest with­out charge will now erode the con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice.

“The first ques­tion that will arise is if the com­mis­sion­er could be ar­rest­ed, well, how fur­ther do we have to go, es­pe­cial­ly in mat­ters re­lat­ed to guns and am­mu­ni­tion, and so on. So yes, nat­u­ral­ly, some con­fi­dence will be lost.”

He added that the new Gov­ern­ment must ad­dress the erod­ing con­fi­dence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er state se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

“Mr Roger Alexan­der, and the oth­ers, the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, and all those in­sti­tu­tions, new­ly formed, have to buck up very quick­ly and get mov­ing in terms of build­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence, and mak­ing sure our Po­lice Ser­vice and our na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence agen­cies are in the prop­er place to serve what they are re­quired to do.”

De­osaran said the PolSC must al­so ex­plain if the CoP will be giv­en an ex­ten­sion on her con­tract, which ends on May 14, a day be­fore her 62nd birth­day. He added that if an ex­ten­sion is not grant­ed, an ex­pla­na­tion must al­so be giv­en.

George be­lieves the sus­pen­sion should be lift­ed im­me­di­ate­ly and the PolSC should al­so share with the pub­lic its find­ings from an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged mis­con­duct of Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“They do have the au­thor­i­ty to dis­ci­pline and ex­er­cise that su­per­vi­so­ry con­trol over the of­fice of the com­mis­sion­er and the deputy com­mis­sion­ers. How­ev­er, I would be in­ter­est­ed to see what they them­selves have un­earthed dur­ing this time, rather than them sim­ply say­ing, well, they were wait­ing on a de­ci­sion from the DPP. While, of course, that is a pro­lif­ic de­ci­sion and one that they must take in­to ac­count, I don’t think it ob­vi­ates and re­lieves them of the need for them to have done their own due dili­gence in the mat­ter. And once they have con­clud­ed that ex­er­cise and there ap­pears to be no good rea­son to con­tin­ue the sus­pen­sion, then, of course, they need to im­me­di­ate­ly do so.”

Both men agreed the han­dling of this mat­ter was a clear sign that there needs to be a change in the way the po­lice com­mis­sion­er is se­lect­ed.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was de­tained on Jan­u­ary 31 by a team of of­fi­cers led by Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Suzette Mar­tin. She was ac­cused of alle­ged­ly sign­ing off on a firearms im­port li­cence on Oc­to­ber 10, 2023, for the pro­cure­ment of two sniper ri­fles for use by the SSA. She was sub­se­quent­ly sus­pend­ed by the PolSC. How­ev­er, she was re­leased from cus­tody on Feb­ru­ary 1.

Ben­jamin clos­es case

Mean­while, in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said the case was be­ing closed.

Point­ing out that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed fol­low­ing a re­quest by a for­mer SSA di­rec­tor and fo­cused on the is­suance of a Firearm Im­port Per­mit for two high-pow­ered ri­fles and ac­ces­sories, pur­port­ed­ly for SSA op­er­a­tional and train­ing use, Ben­jamin said, “The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, as the sole au­thor­i­ty un­der the Firearms Act, grant­ed the per­mit af­ter as­sess­ing the ap­pli­cant’s suit­abil­i­ty and pub­lic safe­ty con­sid­er­a­tions. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in­ves­ti­gat­ed whether the Com­mis­sion­er had wil­ful­ly ne­glect­ed her du­ty or mis­con­duct­ed her­self in grant­i­ng the per­mit. How­ev­er, the me­dia re­lease from the DPP stat­ed that the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed did not meet the high le­gal thresh­old re­quired for crim­i­nal charges, as it did not demon­strate a se­ri­ous de­par­ture from prop­er stan­dards or an abuse of pub­lic trust.”

He added, “The Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions ap­plied the Full Code Test, which eval­u­ates the ev­i­den­tial and pub­lic in­ter­est stages, and con­clud­ed there was no re­al­is­tic prospect of con­vic­tion for any of­fense. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, no im­prop­er mo­tives or un­law­ful con­sid­er­a­tions were found in the Com­mis­sion­er’s ac­tions. As a re­sult, the mat­ter will not pro­ceed fur­ther.”

Ben­jamin thanked the pub­lic for its pa­tience dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and reaf­firmed the po­lice’s ded­i­ca­tion “to op­er­at­ing with trans­paren­cy and in ac­cor­dance with the rule of law.”