Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is con­tin­u­ing.

Speak­ing dur­ing an im­promp­tu Q&A at the Port-of-Spain CID, Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said, “The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is very much ac­tive and we con­tin­ue to do our due dili­gence.”

Asked for an up­date in­to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher and for­mer Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) di­rec­tor Ma­jor Roger Best, Ben­jamin as­sured, “We have gone to the DPP and we await fur­ther in­struc­tions from the DPP at this time.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Best have been ques­tioned by in­ves­ti­ga­tors in the on­go­ing probe in­to the ac­qui­si­tion of two sniper ri­fles for the SSA.Al­though the two were ini­tial­ly de­tained and ar­rest­ed late last month and tak­en in­to cus­tody, they were re­leased on Feb­ru­ary 1 with­out any charges laid.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is be­ing led by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin.

Pressed on if the em­bat­tled Hare­wood-Christo­pher con­tin­ues to be af­ford­ed the priv­i­leges as­so­ci­at­ed with her of­fice, in­clud­ing a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail and the use of a ser­vice-is­sued firearm, Ben­jamin de­clined to an­swer, say­ing those were mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and would con­tin­ue to be kept con­fi­den­tial.

“We con­tin­ue to be very pro­fes­sion­al in the way that we deal with this mat­ter and we will con­tin­ue to en­sure there is a high lev­el of in­tegri­ty in the way we con­duct our op­er­a­tions,” he added.

Asked if he had spo­ken to Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­cent­ly and how she was hold­ing up, he re­vealed, “I would have spo­ken to Ma’am Christo­pher and again, we have a very good cor­dial re­la­tion­ship and we will con­tin­ue to have that even at this time.”

TTPS work­ing with TTR on miss­ing am­mo

Mean­while, the TTPS is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of 25,753 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion from the 1st En­gi­neer Bat­tal­ion Bunker at the T&T Reg­i­ment’s Cu­mu­to Bar­racks, where it had been re­lo­cat­ed in 2022.

Ben­jamin said the TTPS was work­ing with the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.

Say­ing it was still too ear­ly to say any­thing on the probe, he as­sured, “It is a mat­ter that is en­gag­ing the po­lice at­ten­tion and we will con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.”

Say­ing they were work­ing with the TTDF to de­ter­mine how and when the am­mu­ni­tion went miss­ing, Ben­jamin begged the pub­lic, “Let the in­ves­ti­ga­tion take its due course.”

Af­ter on­ly one week as act­ing CoP, Ben­jamin made it clear he has not grant­ed a Firearm Users Li­cence (FUL) to any­one.

Asked to ad­dress a so­cial me­dia re­port that a FUL is­sued to a me­dia per­son­al­i­ty that was re­voked by Hare­wood-Christo­pher be­fore her re­moval from of­fice, had been re­as­signed by him­self, Ben­jamin de­nied he signed off on any such doc­u­ments.

“With­in my first week, I have not dealt with any FUL mat­ters and I want to say, even in the fu­ture when I am deal­ing with that, I will on­ly deal with mat­ters in ac­cor­dance with the Firearms Act 16:01 and al­so in ac­cor­dance with the Stand­ing Or­der of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act 14, that deals with FULs.”