Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Close to two weeks af­ter 93 po­lice of­fi­cers wrote to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) call­ing on it to rein in Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, 122 of­fi­cers have threat­ened to sue her, over her han­dling of the pro­mo­tions of over 800 of­fi­cers.

The law­suit is the lat­est episode in the on­go­ing saga over the pro­mo­tions of 893 po­lice con­sta­bles to cor­po­rals. The of­fi­cers are rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Jagdeo Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Ka­ri­na Singh, Jas­myn Sargeant and Leon Kalicha­ran.

In re­sponse to the at­tor­neys, the PolSC said it will ta­ble a dis­cus­sion on whether to dis­ci­pline the top cop at the next sit­ting of its ex­ec­u­tive, sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 8.

In their pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, the at­tor­neys called on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to cease from do­ing any­thing re­gard­ing the pro­mo­tion of of­fi­cers un­til their con­cerns are ad­dressed.

This comes as 34 po­lice of­fi­cers were pro­mot­ed last week, af­ter act­ing DCP Ram­nar­ine Sama­roo said at the end of an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it was found that 29 of­fi­cers were pro­mot­ed er­ro­neous­ly due to a “glitch” in the process.

Sama­roo said the ex­ec­u­tive was seek­ing ad­vice on how to ad­dress the pro­mot­ed of­fi­cers who ben­e­fit­ted from the glitch. He said af­ter the mat­ter was re­solved, a new mer­it list was pro­duced cor­rect­ing the er­rors from the first one and iden­ti­fy­ing those pro­mot­ed wrong­ful­ly and those who need to be pro­mot­ed.

Re­gard­ing the glitch, the at­tor­neys said they want­ed a com­plete ac­count for when it was de­tect­ed, the root cause, the cor­rec­tive mea­sures tak­en to pre­vent fur­ther glitch­es, the di­ag­nos­tic mea­sures used to ver­i­fy the is­sue and those in­volved in com­pos­ing the mer­it list of of­fi­cers to be pro­mot­ed.

“We fur­ther con­sid­er that such pur­port­ed cor­rec­tive ac­tion is mis­placed and the move­ment of of­fi­cers with­out any ex­pla­na­tion or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for such move­ment is a patent and fa­tal breach of our clients’ rights and en­ti­tle­ment and by ex­ten­sion, all par­tic­i­pants of the pro­mo­tion process,” the at­tor­neys said.

“The clear fail­ure to adopt a log­i­cal and le­git­i­mate process fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the taint­ed mer­it list can on­ly be per­ceived as ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able, an abuse of one’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er and ul­ti­mate­ly a sin­is­ter at­tempt to con­ceal the il­le­git­i­mate ac­tions of those in­volved in the pro­mo­tion process.”

In their let­ter, the at­tor­neys said some of­fi­cers were al­ready con­tact­ed and no­ti­fied of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing stripped of their pro­mo­tion. The lawyers de­mand­ed a rea­son for this de­ci­sion and the mer­it lists, along with the com­par­a­tive points for each of­fi­cer on the mer­it list.

The at­tor­neys said some of their clients were pe­nalised for tak­ing sick leave as­so­ci­at­ed with preg­nan­cies, in con­tra­ven­tion of the Ma­ter­ni­ty Act.

One of their clients was not pro­mot­ed be­cause he was on in­jury leave, in a dis­re­gard of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions poli­cies.

“There is al­so the in­con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion of those on va­ca­tion leave and pre-re­tire­ment leave, who re­ceived pro­mo­tion with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion or cor­re­spond­ing re­quire­ment to re­port on du­ty. This is the epit­o­me of what is ar­bi­trary and ir­ra­tional. Cer­tain­ly, no pol­i­cy ex­ists, nor can any writ­ten pol­i­cy be tak­en to have such in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion,” the at­tor­neys wrote.

An­oth­er client was pe­nalised for in­dis­ci­pline but the at­tor­neys not­ed that he was not un­der any dis­ci­pli­nary charges for the pe­ri­od he was as­sessed for—2020 to 2023.

“Our clients have cer­tain­ly been im­pact­ed by the long­stand­ing fail­ure to con­vene the PAB pur­suant to sec­tion 19(1) for over a decade, how­ev­er, at present, the fail­ure to adopt a pro­ce­du­ral­ly fair and sound process pro­duc­ing time­ly and ac­cu­rate as­sess­ments is now at the fore­front for ur­gent at­ten­tion.”

The pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter came even as the T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, In­sp Gideon Dick­son, at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, said the is­sue was neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing the of­fi­cers’ morale.

Re­fer­ring to the crit­i­cal role the as­so­ci­a­tion played in pro­vid­ing in­de­pen­dent ob­servers for the in­ter­view pan­els to en­sure trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the process, Dick­son said he was tak­en aback af­ter it was re­vealed there had been in­con­sis­ten­cies in the process.

Say­ing the of­fi­cer were not re­spon­si­ble for the mishap, he said, “Our in­for­ma­tion now at this point in time is that 29 per­sons who weren’t sup­posed to be pro­mot­ed, got pro­mot­ed; whilst 34 per­sons in the first in­stance who were sup­posed to be pro­mot­ed, did not get pro­mot­ed.”

He warned, “When morale is im­pact­ed, it sig­nals ef­forts by those who you would want to be the boots on the ground could be com­pro­mised.

“And when that is com­pro­mised, it means safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty be­comes com­pro­mised. And when that oc­curs, it means that the mem­bers of the pub­lic are not get­ting the val­ue that they de­serve, but it is not fault of the of­fi­cers who would have done what is re­quired and present them­selves in the process.”

Not­ing se­nior of­fi­cers made a blun­der, he said “No amount of smooth talk would be able to rem­e­dy that.”

He urged those in au­thor­i­ty, “to do the ho­n­ourable, trans­par­ent, rea­son­able and prac­ti­cal thing in terms of restor­ing trust and con­fi­dence in the sys­tem.”