Akash Sama­roo

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher be­lieves this coun­try is deal­ing with an un­nat­ur­al evil and with­out di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, her an­ti-crime strate­gies, in­clud­ing re­duc­ing mur­ders, will be doomed to fail.

Ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) at Sig­na­ture Hall in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day, Hare­wood-Christo­pher ad­mit­ted that sup­press­ing the mur­der rate is still “a bit be­yond” the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). As such, she called for back­up from above.

“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,” Hare­wood-Christo­pher told the au­di­ence.

She added, “Be­cause the po­lice can come up with what­ev­er strat­e­gy, but un­less we en­list the help of God, we will be work­ing in vain.”

The Co, who on­ly re­cent­ly promised to make a se­ri­ous dent in mur­ders by June of this year, al­so ex­plained to the au­di­ence what suc­cess the TTPS has had this year and the mea­sures she in­tends to roll out.

“For this year alone, we have al­ready re­cov­ered, as of day be­fore yes­ter­day (Mon­day), 126 il­le­gal weapons and over about three thou­sand rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. If you think of am­mu­ni­tion as one round of am­mu­ni­tion can kill some­one, how many lives would have been saved or pro­tect­ed?”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said there will al­so be an in­creased fo­cus on transna­tion­al crime, en­hanc­ing po­lice in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties, lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove po­lice op­er­a­tions and build­ing po­lice le­git­i­ma­cy.

“We know we can’t get your sup­port un­less you trust us,” the CoP said, while promis­ing that she will have a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to po­lice in­dis­ci­pline and cor­rup­tion.

“I want the cit­i­zens to know and feel se­cure that they can re­port, and I know in Cen­tral Di­vi­sion for one, a num­ber of of­fi­cers have been ar­rest­ed and charged for cor­rup­tion, so we are not afraid and we will not stop ar­rest­ing our own if it be­comes nec­es­sary.”

She al­so told the au­di­ence, most of whom were busi­ness own­ers in Ch­agua­nas, that her goal is to “do a lot of in­tro­spec­tion and to fix our man­age­ment and su­per­vi­sion sit­u­a­tion.”

“I want to have of­fi­cers who are able, I want an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is ag­ile, that is re­spon­sive to com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion­al needs, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is ef­fi­cient, ef­fec­tive and, of course, pro­fes­sion­al,” the CoP added.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­it­er­at­ed that po­lice would al­so be fo­cus­ing on the dis­man­tling of crim­i­nal gangs.

“Crim­i­nal gangs and drugs have been re­spon­si­ble for 65 per cent of the drugs and mur­ders in T&T.”

The CoP added that she is from Cen­tral and plans to join the Cunu­pia Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, as she vowed to make Cen­tral and the rest of T&T safe. She al­so called on cit­i­zens to stay on the right side of the law.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran was in at­ten­dance and spoke with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the CoP’s ad­dress.

De­osaran said Hare­wood-Christo­pher's pre­sen­ta­tion was com­mend­able. How­ev­er, he had some ad­vice for her.

“She and the Po­lice Ser­vice have to recog­nise that they need to do their ac­tions down on earth and God will help those who help them­selves.”

De­osaran said her ap­peal for God’s in­ter­ven­tion was en­cour­ag­ing and will res­onate with this coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion, most of whom still be­lieve in a high­er pow­er.

“Be­cause she does need pub­lic sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly with the promis­es by June to re­duce the mur­der rate, so with those promis­es she will not on­ly need cit­i­zens’ sup­port but heav­en­ly sup­port as well.”

On the CoP’s pro­nounce­ment that there is an evil that has in­fect­ed this coun­try, De­osaran said it’s still be­ing per­pe­trat­ed by hu­man be­ings.

“The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem re­sides in the peo­ple who com­mit the mur­ders, home in­va­sions, kid­nap­pings and hu­man traf­fick­ing, and that is where the po­lice have to get in­volved frontal­ly and fun­da­men­tal­ly and then pos­si­bly re­ly on the almighty to try to dri­ve the Dev­il away.”

CCIC pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj was al­so heart­ened by the Com­mis­sion­er’s ad­dress.

“She ad­vo­cat­ed that re­gard­less of the God we wor­ship, we need God's help. This will en­sure that we have good val­ue sys­tems and fear in our minds for wrong­do­ings. A fam­i­ly that be­lieves and prays to God, would less like­ly get in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Ma­haraj al­so com­mend­ed Hare­wood-Christo­pher's crime plans, say­ing he be­lieves they are re­al­is­tic.