Chester Sam­bra­no

In one of her first acts as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, yes­ter­day warned a batch of new Port Po­lice to stay away from bribes.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at their pass­ing out pa­rade at the Cruise Ship Com­plex in Port-of-Spain, Hare­wood-Christo­pher told grad­u­ates to re­sist all temp­ta­tions in their new roles.

“The dis­trac­tions and in­duce­ments to cause you to de­part from the re­quired high stan­dards of per­for­mance will come but re­gard­less of how tempt­ing they may be, you must be de­ter­mined to re­sist such over­tures be­cause the coun­try is de­pend­ing on you as our gate­keep­ers,” the CoP said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who re­ceived her let­ter of ap­point­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) hours ear­li­er, ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try is now chal­lenged with a se­ri­ous crime prob­lem, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders.

She said 80 per cent of the mur­ders are com­mit­ted with il­le­gal firearms and the fact that the weapons are brought in­to this coun­try via le­gal ports of en­try, Port se­cu­ri­ty need to be on alert.

“The Port, and by ex­ten­sion the Port se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer, will have a very crit­i­cal role to play in en­sur­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of its op­er­a­tions and in ad­dress­ing the en­try of il­le­gal items in­to the coun­try,” she said.

Ear­li­er in the day, Hare­wood-Christo­pher de­scribed her ap­point­ment as the first fe­male Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in T&T as “blessed and great.”

It has been de­scribed by some in the pub­lic do­main as the shat­ter­ing of a glass ceil­ing in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), with a woman now sit­ting as the high­est-rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cer in this coun­try.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was pre­sent­ed with her in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment by PolSC chair­man re­tired Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones at the PSC Sec­re­tari­at in Pasea, Tu­na­puna, at 10 am.

When Hare­wood-Christo­pher ar­rived, she made her way hur­ried­ly in­to the build­ing and did the same when she ex­it­ed amid ap­proach­es from the me­dia, who were at­tempt­ing to in­ter­view her re­gard­ing her new ap­point­ment.

She was asked whether she could now be re­ferred to as Com­mis­sion­er, and she said, “Yes you can.”

She was then asked how she felt be­ing the first woman to be ap­point­ed CoP and to this, she replied, “Blessed and great,” be­fore en­ter­ing the ve­hi­cle and leav­ing the com­pound.

In a me­dia re­lease, the PolSC con­firmed the ap­point­ment ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 3, 2023. While it did not give de­tails of the time frame, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands her con­tract will be valid for one year.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s el­e­va­tion to the CoP po­si­tion was ap­proved in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day with the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion.

Con­cerns were raised by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) re­gard­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s age of 59 and the fact that she is due to re­tire from the TTPS on May 15 this year.

How­ev­er, in pi­lot­ing the mo­tion of her nom­i­na­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the law al­lows for an ex­ten­sion of one year and fol­low­ing a re­view, a max­i­mum fur­ther ex­ten­sion of two one-year terms.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s nom­i­na­tion was sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved. How­ev­er, just five days af­ter the nom­i­na­tion’s suc­cess, she failed to ap­pear be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment, cit­ing a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue that re­quired her at­ten­tion. This re­sult­ed in a pub­lic rep­ri­mand from mem­bers of the JSC, in­clud­ing it chair­man, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land.

The last sub­stan­tive Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er was Gary Grif­fith, whose term came to an end in Au­gust 2021.

Fol­low­ing Grif­fith’s con­tro­ver­sial de­par­ture, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob act­ed in the po­si­tion un­til his con­tract end­ed last month.

Both men ap­plied to the PSC for the CoP job but Hare­wood-Christo­pher emerged as the num­ber one can­di­date.