KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

While every­one’s talk­ing about Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s re­in­state­ment, for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) mem­ber, Prof Ramesh De­osaran, be­lieves Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) – In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin has ques­tions to an­swer.

Ac­cord­ing to De­osaran, Mar­tin should be in­ter­viewed by the PolSC af­ter Hare­wood-Christo­pher was cleared of all al­leged wrong­do­ing.

More­over, he be­lieves Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s re­in­state­ment has pre­sent­ed a con­fus­ing im­age to the pub­lic.

De­osaran said, “Ms Mar­tin should pro­duce some pri­vate an­swers to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion be­cause the com­mis­sion has sus­pend­ed Ms Hare­wood-Christo­pher. The DPP has said case closed and the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er has said case closed. So where does Ms Suzette Mar­tin come up now with an in­ten­tion that con­fus­es the whole sce­nario, es­pe­cial­ly that Ms Christo­pher is re­sum­ing of­fice? It looks quite con­fus­ing un­less Ms Mar­tin could clar­i­fy it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble…” He added, “Ms Mar­tin is, of course, un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. I would imag­ine, it pro­duces a puz­zle as to how she in­tends to go for­ward with the same case, look­ing for more ev­i­dence when the DPP has al­ready closed it and the act­ing com­mis­sion­er him­self has agreed to close the case. So, I don’t know if the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion could in­ter­vene and in­ter­view Ms Mar­tin as to the sub­stance of the in­quiry, be­cause it pro­duces a con­fus­ing im­age to the pub­lic mind. So, I think we have been drawn in­to a dilem­ma in this mat­ter, which should have been end­ed, I be­lieve, when the DPP closed the case, un­less Ms Mar­tin knows some­thing, which means there has to be some very con­vinc­ing, very strong ev­i­dence that she has. I think it does pro­duce to the pub­lic an un­prece­dent­ed puz­zle that must be cleared up.”

He not­ed the is­sue must al­so be cleared up be­fore Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s term ends on Thurs­day, when she cel­e­brates her 62nd birth­day.

De­osaran said the PolSC al­so needs to act fast in get­ting the or­der of mer­it list for a com­mis­sion­er to the Pres­i­dent, to de­cide on her re­place­ment.

But in the ab­sence of Par­lia­ment be­ing open, De­osaran said one op­tion is hav­ing Ju­nior Ben­jamin—who served as act­ing CoP as a re­sult of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s sus­pen­sion—re­main the in­ter­im head of the TTPS.

“From my un­der­stand­ing, the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­ce­dure is that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has to deal with a fresh ap­point­ment. There is no more room for her term, Ms Christo­pher, to be ex­tend­ed. She has al­ready been ex­tend­ed twice as the Po­lice Ser­vice Act re­quires and the Cab­i­net did. The PNM Cab­i­net did give an ex­ten­sion twice and that is the lim­it ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Ser­vice Act,” he said.

“So the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion now has to al­ready pro­duce their rank list they have al­ready ad­ver­tised, pro­duce their rank list to the Pres­i­dent for trans­mis­sion to the Par­lia­ment, which is yet to be opened. So, it seems as one of the first acts that the new Gov­ern­ment has to per­form is to, when Par­lia­ment is called, with the list sub­mit­ted from the Pres­i­dent, they will have to make a de­ci­sion, have a de­bate and make a de­ci­sion as to who is the com­mis­sion­er that they pre­fer from the rank list sent by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion…”

He said Ben­jamin will have to con­tin­ue act­ing in the po­si­tion un­til a de­ci­sion is made.

De­osaran al­so re­it­er­at­ed his call for Gov­ern­ment to re­view the process of ap­point­ing a com­mis­sion­er.

“It is too messy, re­cur­rent­ly so. And the new Gov­ern­ment should then seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view that process of ap­point­ing a po­lice com­mis­sion­er. Re­view Sec­tion 123 in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Oth­er­wise, we will be fac­ing such dilem­mas over and over.”

Al­so re­new­ing his call to re­view the se­lec­tion process, was for­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who warned that trust in the TTPS is near col­lapse in the wake of the lat­est sce­nario.

In a sharply word­ed video mes­sage, Grif­fith con­demned what he de­scribed as a pat­tern of po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed per­se­cu­tion and cov­er-ups.

He al­so crit­i­cised the ap­point­ment process for com­mis­sion­er, say­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher ranked out­side the top 20 in in­ter­na­tion­al as­sess­ments but some­how end­ed up first af­ter the PolSC took over.

“This wasn’t her fault but the process was cor­rupt,” he said.

He said Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ar­rest was un­jus­ti­fied and based on de­lib­er­ate mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion by of­fi­cers in the TTPS Le­gal Unit and the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB). He called for those of­fi­cers’ im­me­di­ate re­moval and said the PSB should be shut down and re­built.

“This is not just in­com­pe­tence, it is in­sti­tu­tion­al sab­o­tage,” he said.