Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has apol­o­gised to her of­fi­cers af­ter the le­git­i­ma­cy of some 900 pro­mo­tions of con­sta­bles to cor­po­rals was brought in­to ques­tion.

In an in­ter­nal memo on De­cem­ber 6, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said, “I un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tion of the con­cerns raised, not just for the af­fect­ed ranks, but for all of­fi­cers of the TTPS and for con­fi­dence in our pro­mo­tion process­es go­ing for­ward. In the cir­cum­stances, I wish to sin­cere­ly apol­o­gise for this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent, and for the ad­verse im­pacts it would have on the af­fect­ed of­fi­cers.”

In an­oth­er in­ter­nal memo on No­vem­ber 20, ti­tled “Re­vised Mer­it List for Pro­mo­tion in the Rank of Cor­po­ral, which was di­rect­ed to the act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Ram­nar­ine Sama­roo, Hare­wood-Christo­pher had called on Sama­roo to “iden­ti­fy the of­fi­cers who were er­ro­neous­ly pro­mot­ed; the an­tic­i­pat­ed chal­lenges that will arise when the re­vised mer­it list is pub­lished; the an­tic­i­pat­ed im­pact on the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion and the re­me­di­al plans to cush­ion the an­tic­i­pat­ed im­pact when the re­vised list is pub­lished..

Sama­roo was giv­en un­til No­vem­ber 22 to re­spond.

In her De­cem­ber memo, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said af­ter she was no­ti­fied of “anom­alies in the al­lo­ca­tion of marks,” she im­me­di­ate­ly con­vened a meet­ing with Sama­roo re­quest­ing a com­pre­hen­sive writ­ten re­port, which he sub­mit­ted.

The re­port, she said, is now be­ing re­viewed, “with a view of de­ter­min­ing the na­ture, source, and ex­tent of any pos­si­ble anom­alies.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said she un­der­stood the im­pli­ca­tions raised in the pub­lic do­main and the ser­vice af­fect­ing the pro­mot­ed of­fi­cers, and its im­pact on the con­fi­dence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) pro­mo­tion process­es.

“I wish to as­sure all in­ter­est­ed stake­hold­ers that I am com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the out­come of this ex­er­cise meets the re­quired stan­dards of in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. To this end, I pro­pose to en­gage an ex­ter­nal le­gal team head­ed by a se­nior coun­sel to pro­vide le­gal ad­vice and make rec­om­men­da­tions that will bring a res­o­lu­tion of this mat­ter in the best in­ter­est of all con­cerned. In this re­gard, I am hope­ful for an ex­pe­di­tious res­o­lu­tion of this mat­ter.”

Last month, TTPS So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, said the reper­cus­sions will af­fect of­fi­cers’ morale if pro­mo­tions are tak­en away or re­viewed.

He not­ed that some of­fi­cers on the list passed pro­mo­tion ex­ams as far back as 2009 and were wait­ing for over a decade to be pro­mot­ed. He added that if the mat­ter need­ed to go to court, he and the as­so­ci­a­tion was ready to do so.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the CoP’s lat­est memo on the mat­ter, how­ev­er, Dick­son said he was not go­ing to re­spond at this time.

In a me­dia re­lease in June, the TTPS said the in­tegri­ty of its pro­mo­tion process was in­tact amidst grow­ing con­cerns that there were ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the process.

Part of the re­lease then said, “While pro­mo­tion in­ter­view ques­tions and as­sumed an­swers may be cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, the TTPS stands by the in­tegri­ty of the pro­mo­tion process and can as­sure all can­di­dates and stake­hold­ers, that such in­for­ma­tion did not orig­i­nate from the Pro­mo­tion Ad­vi­so­ry Board or the TTPS. How­ev­er, the TTPS will re-ex­am­ine the strin­gency of its pro­ce­dures, to fur­ther en­sure that the in­tegri­ty of this im­por­tant pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise is main­tained.”