Shane Su­perville

Act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son has urged po­lice of­fi­cers to up­hold pro­fes­sion­al­ism and re­main fo­cused on their du­ties as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­turns to lead the ser­vice fol­low­ing months of un­cer­tain­ty.

The head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) made the call on Sun­day, short­ly af­ter con­fir­ma­tion that no charges would be laid against Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was de­tained and ques­tioned ear­li­er this year over the unau­tho­rised trans­fer of an AX-2 sniper ri­fle to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

In a state­ment is­sued on Sat­ur­day, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard con­firmed that while the ev­i­dence was suf­fi­cient to con­sid­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher a sus­pect, it did not meet the thresh­old re­quired to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher had been ar­rest­ed at her of­fice on Jan­u­ary 30 and held at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion be­fore be­ing re­leased on Feb­ru­ary 1. Re­ports on Sun­day in­di­cat­ed that she would re­turn to ac­tive du­ty.

Dick­son, who spoke with her ear­li­er in the af­ter­noon, said she had in­formed him of her in­ten­tion to vis­it her of­fice at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing on Sackville Street.

Asked whether ten­sions might arise be­tween the Com­mis­sion­er and of­fi­cers in­volved in her ques­tion­ing, Dick­son ad­mit­ted the po­ten­tial for awk­ward in­ter­ac­tions but said all of­fi­cers must put pro­fes­sion­al­ism first.

“Truth be told, there might be some awk­ward­ness be­cause we’re deal­ing with hu­man be­ings, but at the end of the day, pro­fes­sion­al­ism should trump any awk­ward­ness be­cause we all have a des­ig­nat­ed role and pur­pose to per­form and should go about it from that lens and no oth­er lens,” he said.

He added, “We have rules, reg­u­la­tions, de­part­men­tal or­ders and guide­lines which af­fect our dai­ly de­liv­ery of ser­vice in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly.”

Dick­son al­so said the pub­lic han­dling of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ar­rest raised con­cerns, sug­gest­ing the sit­u­a­tion could have been man­aged with greater sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

“I think the pub­lic­i­ty sur­round­ing the mat­ter should have been han­dled bet­ter, and I hope the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers re­flect and learn from the short­falls,” he said.