Raphael John-Lall

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is de­fend­ing her con­tro­ver­sial state­ment that di­vine in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed in the fight against crime.

“The last time I spoke at a fo­rum like this, what was sub­se­quent­ly re­port­ed and wide­ly com­ment­ed up­on was not the ef­fi­ca­cy of the very de­tailed and com­pre­hen­sive plan ad­dress­ing sev­er­al ar­eas of polic­ing to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T, but in­stead ref­er­ences to a sin­gle state­ment I made in re­la­tion to di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, which I main­tain is rel­e­vant to the dis­course and I say it again, we know God is in con­trol of every­thing, so we need his in­ter­ven­tion,” she said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher made the com­ment dur­ing a fo­rum host­ed by the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers and the Trade and De­vel­op­ment Unit of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) at the Trade and Learn­ing Com­plex at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus yes­ter­day.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was re­fer­ring to the com­ment she made dur­ing a fo­rum host­ed by the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) two weeks ago.

Dur­ing that event, the CoP told the gath­er­ing, “An evil has spread over the land and we must recog­nise, those of you who are spir­i­tu­al­ly in­clined, you must recog­nise that this is be­yond the phys­i­cal and un­less we seek the in­ter­ven­tion of that greater spir­it, what­ev­er we may call him, we know we have dif­fer­ent re­li­gions, so who will call him God, who will call him Al­lah, or Kr­ish­na, all of us, if not all of us, 99 per cent of us be­lieve in a su­pe­ri­or be­ing and we need to in­voke the help of that be­ing, if we need to re­al­ly bring Trinidad and To­ba­go back to that place where we want it to be. Be­cause the po­lice can come up with what­ev­er strat­e­gy, but un­less we en­list the help of God, we will be work­ing in vain.”

Ad­dress­ing the fo­rum at UWI yes­ter­day, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said while the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has made im­por­tant strides in re­duc­ing the crime rate, the pop­u­la­tion is still un­hap­py be­cause the homi­cide rate is still high. She said, un­for­tu­nate­ly, it is the mur­der rate that is used by the pub­lic to de­ter­mine how suc­cess­ful the fight against crime is.

“The barom­e­ter for crime in T&T has for quite some time been the homi­cide rate,” the CoP said.

“The TTPS is work­ing hard and achiev­ing cred­itable re­sults in many of its an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing the seizure of high-pow­ered weapons. Those achieve­ments are eclipsed and sub­or­di­nat­ed to dis­cus­sions about the homi­cide rate. So un­less the pub­lic ex­pe­ri­ences a re­duc­tion in the homi­cide rate, the pub­lic per­cep­tion of crime will be neg­a­tive.”

She added, how­ev­er, that the TTPS has had suc­cess in the re­trieval of firearms, which will ul­ti­mate­ly save lives.

“For 2022, 87 per cent of our mur­ders were com­mit­ted by firearms. It is im­por­tant to note that for 2023, we have al­ready re­cov­ered 185 firearms and over 6,384 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. Think of the num­ber of lives saved.”

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, who al­so spoke at the fo­rum af­ter Hare­wood-Christo­pher, ac­cused some sec­tions of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of “bac­cha­nal” for tak­ing what the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice said on “di­vine in­ter­ven­tion” out of con­text.

“Madam Com­mis­sion­er, in her clos­ing re­marks a while ago, re­mind­ed us that we spent three weeks crit­i­cis­ing her be­cause she sum­moned the great­ness of almighty God. I de­fine that as bac­cha­nal. We do so in a coun­try where bac­cha­nal is very and ever-present. A lot of im­por­tant things get lost in bac­cha­nal,” Hinds said.

He al­so said cor­rup­tion is a ma­jor prob­lem in T&T that is even af­fect­ing the prop­er func­tion­ing of the state.

“There are very se­ri­ous and long-stand­ing prob­lems in T&T to be re­solved. Cor­rup­tion is en­dem­ic and it is af­fect­ing a lot that we do. It is a con­stant fight.”

He al­so blamed movies with vi­o­lence and pornog­ra­phy for hav­ing an ad­verse in­flu­ence on youths, lead­ing them down a neg­a­tive path.

“I heard the Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain...yes­ter­day, he went on to say that he did re­search and that T&T was third in the world in terms of con­sum­ing pornog­ra­phy and our chil­dren have ac­cess to that on a dai­ly ba­sis.”