Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is strong­ly de­fend­ing her of­fi­cers’ com­mit­ment and readi­ness to serve the pub­lic fol­low­ing claims by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that cops are hid­ing in sta­tions from crim­i­nals. In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­as­sured cit­i­zens that the doors of the po­lice sta­tions are “al­ways open.”

Dr Row­ley made the re­marks dur­ing his open­ing ad­dress on a mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for an ad­di­tion­al three months in the Low­er House on Mon­day. He lament­ed that crime had be­come so ram­pant in some ar­eas that of­fi­cers were over­whelmed by the dan­ger posed by crim­i­nals.

“Po­lice of­fi­cers whose job it is to pro­tect us and to se­cure us, in some dis­tricts at night are so afraid of crim­i­nals that they close the po­lice sta­tion door, turn off the lights, and be in­side there, hop­ing the crim­i­nals don’t come,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns raised by Dr Row­ley, Hare­wood-Christo­pher ac­knowl­edged the chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment law en­force­ment of­fi­cers face but stressed that their ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty is un­wa­ver­ing. “I wish to re­as­sure the pub­lic of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s ded­i­ca­tion and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to per­form­ing its polic­ing func­tions.”

The top cop as­sured the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that “the men and women of the TTPS are trained, ded­i­cat­ed, and res­olute in their mis­sion to pro­tect and serve every cit­i­zen, even in the face of im­mi­nent dan­ger.”

They have demon­strat­ed this in the past, she said, and are com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing that stan­dard of per­for­mance.

Re­gard­less of the per­ceived risks, she ex­pressed full con­fi­dence in her of­fi­cers’ re­solve, not­ing that they are equipped and ca­pa­ble of han­dling any emer­gency that aris­es.

Ac­cord­ing to Hare­wood-Christo­pher, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is al­ways pre­pared to as­sist cit­i­zens, and she en­cour­aged the pub­lic to share cru­cial in­for­ma­tion in the fight against crime.

She said while cer­tain se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols have been height­ened due to the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), these mea­sures are nec­es­sary for the pro­tec­tion of both the pub­lic and of­fi­cers, es­pe­cial­ly in the face of in­creas­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. She clar­i­fied the cat­e­gori­sa­tion of po­lice sta­tions based on the ser­vices they pro­vide, ex­plain­ing that po­lice fa­cil­i­ties across the na­tion are op­er­a­tional 24 hours a day to meet the over­whelm­ing de­mand for law en­force­ment.

“Based on long-stand­ing in­ter­nal pol­i­cy, po­lice sta­tions are cat­e­gorised as A, B, or C class, which de­ter­mines the scope of ser­vices that are pro­vid­ed from each sta­tion lo­ca­tion. How­ev­er, based on the high de­mand for polic­ing na­tion­wide, this pol­i­cy was amend­ed, and all po­lice sta­tions were man­dat­ed to re­main op­er­a­tional full-time, 24 hours each day, sev­en days per week. And while all po­lice units are not res­i­dent at all po­lice sta­tions, all polic­ing ser­vices are ex­tend­ed to all sta­tion dis­tricts with­in each di­vi­sion.

“At all times while on du­ty, po­lice of­fi­cers are ful­ly equipped and sup­port­ed to re­spond to emer­gen­cies, con­duct pa­trols, and en­gage with the pub­lic. In all these cir­cum­stances, our of­fi­cers have con­sis­tent­ly dis­charged their du­ty and main­tained the stan­dard of brav­ery and pro­fes­sion­al­ism that is re­quired.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said, “Our in­ter­nal poli­cies al­so de­fine the se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols ap­plic­a­ble to all po­lice-oc­cu­pied build­ings. These pro­to­cols have been height­ened as we progress through this cur­rent State of Emer­gency.”

She said as they nav­i­gate through this crit­i­cal pe­ri­od of the SoE, they are re­ly­ing on the co­op­er­a­tion of the pub­lic “as we work as­sid­u­ous­ly to dis­man­tle the crim­i­nal net­works. We there­fore as­sure the pub­lic that our doors are al­ways open and ready to re­ceive vi­tal in­for­ma­tion and ren­der any re­quired as­sis­tance to the pub­lic.”

The CoP said if any mem­ber of the pub­lic en­coun­ters any dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­cess­ing a po­lice sta­tion, they are ad­vised to call 736-TTPS.