For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams says now that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has a full com­ple­ment of deputies to as­sist her, judg­ing her per­for­mance go­ing for­ward will be more im­par­tial. 

 In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Williams said polic­ing was a team ef­fort, and for her first year, she was with­out con­firmed deputies and even act­ing deputies. 

 Ear­li­er this year, Par­lia­ment ap­proved the po­si­tions of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for Ju­nior Ben­jamin, Suzette Mar­tin, and Natasha George.  

“The or­gan­i­sa­tion has a whole new ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team just in­stalled. It is not about one per­son; it is about a team. It is rea­son­able for the com­mis­sion­er to get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with a lead­er­ship team and seek to make a dif­fer­ence. We tend to as­sess things with­out im­par­tial­i­ty, so for me, I would not want to do the rat­ings; let the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) do their rat­ings, but the coun­try needs to fo­cus on the pos­i­tive things to make a dif­fer­ence, as against ba­si­cal­ly fo­cus­ing strict­ly on a com­mis­sion­er to make mag­ic.” 

 Williams said the per­son in charge of the po­lice ser­vice will need sup­port.  

 “Who­ev­er you have as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it will be a chal­leng­ing task. Some­times the peo­ple who does be talk­ing and say­ing neg­a­tive things, if you check their records in their first year, crime didn’t go down, it went up.” 

 At a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said she failed to meet 11 of her tar­gets, which in­clud­ed re­duc­ing the mur­der toll and im­prov­ing the de­tec­tion rate. 

 Based on da­ta pro­vid­ed to Guardian Me­dia for the first year in of­fice of a po­lice com­mis­sion­er since 2004, Hare­wood-Christo­pher ranked in the top three for most cat­e­gories. 

 For the de­tec­tion rate for se­ri­ous crimes, she ranked sec­ond, oust­ed by Ja­cob by less than two per cent. She al­so had the low­est num­ber of re­port­ed se­ri­ous crimes. For the first full year in of­fice, Hare­wood-Christo­pher had the fourth high­est mur­der de­tec­tion rate and the sixth high­est mur­der toll record­ed. 

 Williams said that as a pa­tri­ot, he of­fered ad­vice to Hare­wood-Chris­tio­pher, which he said she heed­ed. The ad­vice al­so ex­tend­ed to Mc Don­ald Ja­cob and Gary Grif­fith. Grif­fith, he said, was a “dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish,” and while he did not ad­vise him di­rect­ly, Grif­fith’s man­age­ment team trust­ed his years of ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom enough to reach out to him. 

 Williams called on the coun­try not to fo­cus on the top cop or the Gov­ern­ment for as­sis­tance but to look with­in and fix their com­mu­ni­ties to ad­dress crime.  

“If we could start to fo­cus on mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go and fix­ing the place, Trinidad and To­ba­go would get bet­ter. We tend to fo­cus on a com­mis­sion­er; we tend to fo­cus on a gov­ern­ment. That will not fix Trinidad and To­ba­go by fo­cus­ing on a com­mis­sion­er and a gov­ern­ment.” 

 And while Williams is call­ing on the coun­try not to fo­cus on the com­mis­sion­er and her per­for­mance, for­mer mem­ber of the PolSC Mar­tin George said the Cab­i­net must ex­plain why Hare­wood-Christo­pher was giv­en an ex­ten­sion. 

 Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, George said it was Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s own ad­mis­sion that she did not meet her own set stan­dards. 

 Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, at the launch of a Vi­sion on Mis­sion pro­gramme, said PolSC gave Hare­wood-Christo­pher a pass­ing grade, which he said was sup­port­ed by oth­er stake­hold­ers. 

 On Mon­day, the Cab­i­net agreed to ex­tend Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract for an­oth­er year. And while she is con­firmed in her po­si­tion for 12 more months, the PolSC be­gan its search for her re­place­ment last month. 

 Among those hop­ing to se­cure her post are ACP Wayne Mys­tar, Anand Rame­sar, and head of the po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion ASP Gideon Dick­son. 

 Rame­sar, who was sec­ond in line for the po­si­tion when Hare­wood-Christo­pher was se­lect­ed last year, is cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion. The head of the Spe­cialised Sup­port Unit told Guardian Me­dia that, hav­ing at­tained his mas­ter’s de­gree last year in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and In­tel­li­gence Stud­ies, he ap­plied for the po­si­tion. 

 “I am a ca­reer po­lice of­fi­cer with 34 years in the ser­vice, and it was my dream, my am­bi­tion to do so. I was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, hav­ing re­ceived my mas­ter’s last year, so I de­cid­ed to take that chance,” Rame­sar said. 

 Dick­son, too, said he saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty and ap­plied. 

 Guardian Me­dia was told that at least four oth­er se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers ap­plied for the po­si­tion, but at­tempts to con­firm with them were un­suc­cess­ful as they did not an­swer when called. 

 Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was con­firmed in Feb­ru­ary last year, three months shy of her 60th birth­day, came un­der fire when she grad­ed her­self as “ex­cel­lent” af­ter her first 100 days in of­fice. She re­ceived fur­ther crit­i­cism for call­ing for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion to ad­dress crime and for promis­ing a dras­tic re­duc­tion in mur­ders with­in six months.