Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has giv­en an as­sur­ance that she will not in any way in­ter­fere with the pro­mo­tion of some 900 po­lice of­fi­cers un­til she an­swers what went wrong in the er­ro­neous pro­mo­tion of 29 of­fi­cers.

In re­sponse to at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing 122 po­lice of­fi­cers who wrote to her on Wednes­day, the top cop, through the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Le­gal Unit, said she would ac­cede to the re­quest not to make any changes to the pro­mo­tion list for cor­po­rals. Hare­wood-Christo­pher added that she will re­spond on the is­sues on or be­fore Feb­ru­ary 23.

“We are in­struct­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that she is will­ing to give an un­der­tak­ing not to take any fur­ther steps and/or make any de­ci­sions con­cern­ing the 2023 pro­mo­tion to the rank of Cor­po­ral, pend­ing the sub­stan­tive re­sponse to the is­sues raised,” Anya Ra­mute-Mo­han, of the TTPS Le­gal Unit, told the at­tor­neys via a let­ter.

The at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the of­fi­cers made the re­quest af­ter 35 of­fi­cers were pro­mot­ed last week, af­ter it was de­ter­mined that a com­put­er glitch had caused the er­ro­neous pro­mo­tions of 29 out of 893 of­fi­cers from con­sta­bles to cor­po­rals.

How­ev­er, re­spond­ing to Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s re­quest yes­ter­day, the at­tor­neys—Jagdeo Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Ka­ri­na Singh, Jas­myn Sargeant and Leon Kalicha­ran—said the month-long ex­ten­sion is un­rea­son­able.

“The in­tem­per­ate and hap­haz­ard ac­tions of the Com­mis­sion­er call for rea­son­able and ur­gent ac­tion on be­half of our clients. This is nec­es­sary to pre­serve the sta­tus quo of the mat­ters, which are sub­ject to chal­lenge and in avoid­ance of fur­ther ac­tions be­ing tak­en by the Com­mis­sion­er to the prej­u­dice to our clients and the wider par­tic­i­pat­ing mem­ber­ship. It is al­so in the pub­lic in­ter­est to safe­guard the con­fi­dence of the Com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice against ac­tions that can fur­ther bring the of­fice in­to dis­re­pute.”

The let­ter added: “Ac­cord­ing­ly, we are un­able to con­sid­er or agree to any ex­ten­sion of time un­less an un­der­tak­ing is giv­en by the Com­mis­sion­er not to take any fur­ther steps and/or make any de­ci­sions con­cern­ing the 2023 pro­mo­tions for Con­sta­ble to Cor­po­ral pend­ing a sub­stan­tive an­swer to the sev­er­al mat­ters con­tained in our let­ter in­clu­sive of the sev­er­al re­quests for dis­clo­sure.”

The at­tor­neys, in their pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on Wednes­day, asked for a com­plete ac­count on when the glitch was de­tect­ed, the root cause, what­ev­er cor­rec­tive mea­sures were tak­en to pre­vent fur­ther glitch­es, the di­ag­nos­tic mea­sures used to ver­i­fy no fur­ther glitch­es and those in­volved in com­pos­ing the mer­it list of of­fi­cers to be pro­mot­ed.

“We fur­ther con­sid­er that such pur­port­ed cor­rec­tive ac­tion is mis­placed and the move­ment of of­fi­cers with­out any ex­pla­na­tion or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for such move­ment is a patent and fa­tal breach of our clients’ rights and en­ti­tle­ment and by ex­ten­sion, all par­tic­i­pants of the pro­mo­tion process. The clear fail­ure to adopt a log­i­cal and le­git­i­mate process fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the taint­ed mer­it list can on­ly be per­ceived as ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able, an abuse of one’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er and ul­ti­mate­ly a sin­is­ter at­tempt to con­ceal the il­le­git­i­mate ac­tions of those in­volved in the pro­mo­tion process,” the at­tor­neys said.