An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion sur­round­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s in­volve­ment in­to the pro­cure­ment of two sniper ri­fles con­tin­ues, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) top brass re­main tight-lipped about the sta­tus of the probe.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions) Ju­nior Ben­jamin de­clined to an­swer all ques­tions per­tain­ing to the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and re­peat­ed­ly urged the me­dia and pub­lic to give of­fi­cers time to com­plete the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Asked if he was now in charge of the TTPS, he said, “The is­sue with the CoP has been ad­dressed by the PolSC and there­fore, we stand in terms of await­ing the process to en­sure who would be next act­ing CoP at this time.”

The par­lia­ment will meet to de­bate on an act­ing CoP to­mor­row, where Ben­jamin is ex­pect­ed to be in line for the po­si­tion. Ben­jamin is the most se­nior TTPS of­fi­cial at this time, while DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin is next in line.

In a let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 31 to Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace in­struct­ed the top cop to cease her du­ties un­til fur­ther no­tice. How­ev­er, Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s at­tor­ney, Pamela El­der SC, yes­ter­day gave the PolSC un­til 2 pm to­day to re­scind the or­der or face a le­gal chal­lenge.

While sev­er­al ques­tions were fired at Ben­jamin re­gard­ing var­i­ous as­pects of the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion yes­ter­day, he side-stepped them all with a gen­er­al re­sponse that, “this is a mat­ter that is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and we want to be very care­ful in terms of say­ing any­thing fur­ther.”

Di­rect­ing all-re­lat­ed ques­tions to DCP Mar­tin, as she was spear­head­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Ben­jamin as­sured, “The TTPS re­mains fo­cused in terms of the task that is ahead, and that task is to en­sure greater sta­bil­i­ty of our of­fi­cers, en­sure that at this time there is that heal­ing process and as we con­tin­ue to do that, we will con­tin­ue to en­sure that all that is in place for the well run­ning of the po­lice ser­vice and our of­fi­cers from deputy com­mis­sion­er, as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er and even our di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders...we are all on board to en­sure that the po­lice ser­vice stands tall even in the midst of our chal­lenges.”

Ques­tioned as to the morale of of­fi­cers in the face of the un­fold­ing con­tro­ver­sy, Ben­jamin said, “The TTPS re­mains very re­silient and com­mit­ted to the task be­fore us. We re­main fo­cused on what is in front of us.”

Asked if of­fi­cers were con­flict­ed in hav­ing to watch a se­nior of­fi­cer in­ves­ti­gat­ing the head of the TTPS, Ben­jamin re­spond­ed, “The TTPS...we are one. We have al­ways been one team and each and every one of us, we all op­er­ate as one.”

He as­sured, “There is a na­tion that needs us and we have an SoE in ef­fect, and we have our ob­jec­tives to per­form with­in the SoE, and we will do our du­ties with­out fear or favour, mal­ice or ill will.”

Asked when last they had seen and spo­ken with the CoP, Ben­jamin said, “Our prayers con­tin­ues to be with her.”

Vi­ral video is 6 months old

Ad­dress­ing a vi­ral video that sur­faced on Sun­day, in which he was seen wear­ing a bul­let-proof vest as he de­liv­ered a ser­mon at his church on Au­gust 4, 2024, Ben­jamin sought to con­tex­tu­alise the clip.

He ex­plained, “It was an il­lus­trat­ed ser­mon that I was giv­ing on the top­ic at the time, Bat­tle Warn­ing. And as I was ad­dress­ing the whole idea of Bat­tle Warn­ing, I was dressed show­ing in bat­tle, that we must al­ways be pre­pared. There­fore, the bul­let proof vest was there to show that bat­tle-readi­ness.”

Ben­jamin said, “I want to make it cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly clear that I do not wear a bul­let proof vest every sin­gle Sun­day, and it was done on that par­tic­u­lar day as a way to demon­strate to the au­di­ence that we are in a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing his state­ments dur­ing the ser­mon that he would be a CoP one day, Ben­jamin, who is an or­dained pas­tor, said, “In the ser­mon Bat­tle Warn­ing, I stat­ed that we ought to be strong, and that is some­thing that T&T, we all need to be in times of strug­gle, that we need to know that we can find strength in God and we can al­so find strength in our pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tions.”

He said he had pro­vid­ed ex­am­ples of pos­i­tiv­i­ty and en­cour­age­ment to his parish­ioners at the time, not­ing one such af­fir­ma­tion was that he would one day be­come a CoP—and would be a very good one at that.

Say­ing these af­fir­ma­tions helped him reach where he was now, Ben­jamin said he was un­cer­tain of the pur­pose and in­tent be­hind the video.

He added, “I do not know the in­tent of the in­di­vid­ual (who re­leased the video) but I would say, that at the end, the pur­pose and my in­tent was to just strength­en my con­gre­ga­tion and those who are lis­ten­ing, that there is hope for to­mor­row.”