Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For­mer act­ing com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Stephen Williams was hired as a con­sul­tant to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for $800 an hour last year.

He was be­ing paid based on the hours of ser­vice ren­dered.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia, Williams pro­vid­ed 53 hours of con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices in one month and 67 hours in an­oth­er.

The earn­ings were for June and Sep­tem­ber 2023.

He told Guardian Me­dia last week that he was a con­sul­tant and not an ad­vis­er as the dif­fer­ence be­tween both roles are sig­nif­i­cant.

In De­cem­ber 2023, Williams rub­bished claims on so­cial me­dia that he was hired as Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ad­vis­er.

“I haven’t been hired by the com­mis­sion­er as an ad­vis­er and that’s as sim­ple as it is,” Williams told the me­dia at the time.

Last week, when Guardian Me­dia ap­proached Williams with doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence of him be­ing paid by the TTPS, he ad­mit­ted that he is pro­vid­ing con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for the com­mis­sion­er.

Williams: Ad­vis­er

dif­fer­ent to con­sul­tant

“If I was hired as an ad­vis­er, I would be on a month­ly re­tain­er salary and I would have had no month­ly re­tain­er salary from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and no­body could say any­thing dif­fer­ent to that. I have pro­vid­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice with con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices on par­tic­u­lar mat­ters and I have been paid by virtue of the hours giv­en in ser­vice for those con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices,” he said.

He did not elab­o­rate on the na­ture of the con­sul­tan­cy but de­scribed it as “po­lice-re­lat­ed” mat­ters.

He point­ed out that while he has of­fered ser­vices of lec­tures and train­ing work­shops for dif­fer­ent branch­es of the TTPS since his re­tire­ment in 2018, this was the first time he was sought by a sit­ting CoP for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.

In ad­di­tion, he said, he had pro­vid­ed oth­er lec­tures and sem­i­nars free of charge for Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her pre­de­ces­sor Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob.

And while Ja­cob’s pre­de­ces­sor Gary Grif­fith did not di­rect­ly ap­proach him, Williams said he was con­tact­ed by Grif­fith’s sub­or­di­nates dur­ing his tenure as po­lice com­mis­sion­er for as­sis­tance.

“Dur­ing Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith’s term of of­fice, many mem­bers of his staff would have con­tact­ed me for guid­ance and ad­vice on nu­mer­ous mat­ters which I gave with­out mak­ing a fuss. I didn’t say well, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said this or that about Williams. It is about try­ing to help Trinidad and To­ba­go and the po­lice ser­vice and any­thing I can do in that con­text, I’ll do,” he said.

Williams’ chal­lenges as top cop

Williams orig­i­nal­ly ap­plied to be CoP in 2008, how­ev­er, vet­er­an homi­cide de­tec­tive James Philbert was in­stead ap­point­ed as com­mis­sion­er that year, suc­ceed­ing Trevor Paul.

In 2008, T&T ex­pe­ri­enced one of the high­est mur­der tolls in his­to­ry with 550 mur­ders that year, a record that was not bro­ken un­til 2022 with 600 mur­ders.

Williams was al­lowed to act as com­mis­sion­er for a month in Au­gust 2010 af­ter Philbert re­ceived a let­ter from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) ad­vis­ing him to im­me­di­ate­ly demit of­fice.

Williams served as act­ing com­mis­sion­er be­fore Cana­di­ans Dwayne Gibbs and Jack Ewats­ki ar­rived in T&T in Sep­tem­ber 2010.

When both men re­signed in Ju­ly 2012, Williams served as act­ing CoP, be­gin­ning the first of 12 con­tin­u­ous six-month ex­ten­sions up to 2018 when he was even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed by Grif­fith.

Dur­ing his ad­dress at a 2018 Con­fer­ence of Caribbean Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers, crim­i­nol­o­gist and for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair Prof Ramesh De­osaran called on the au­thor­i­ties to apol­o­gise to Williams for not con­firm­ing him, de­scrib­ing his 12 ex­ten­sions as a “Caribbean record-break­er.”

In Ju­ly 2018, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, dur­ing a sit­ting of the Low­er House, de­scribed Williams as be­ing a “vic­tim of the sys­tem.”

Dur­ing his re­tire­ment din­ner at River­side Plaza, Port-of-Spain, in 2018, Williams in his farewell speech said the “po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate” at the time of his first ap­pli­ca­tion in 2008 felt he was “qual­i­fied but too young.”

Williams has a Mas­ter’s De­gree in Ap­plied Crim­i­nol­o­gy and Po­lice Man­age­ment, an ex­ec­u­tive diplo­ma in strate­gic man­age­ment, a Mas­ter’s in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion, an ex­ec­u­tive diplo­ma in pub­lic sec­tor man­age­ment, and is an at­tor­ney.

Grif­fith: Er­la needs all the help she can get

Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia last week that Williams’ as­sis­tance to Hare­wood-Christo­pher would be ben­e­fi­cial to the ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tion­ing of the ser­vice, but stressed that she need­ed more help in ar­eas of form­ing crime-fight­ing strate­gies.

Grif­fith, who served as CoP from 2018 to 2021, said Hare­wood-Christo­pher seek­ing the as­sis­tance of Williams should not be seen as a sign of weak­ness as all lead­ers call on ex­perts for ad­vice and coun­sel.

Re­fer­ring to his term of lead­er­ship, Grif­fith said he al­so sought the as­sis­tance of dif­fer­ent sub­ject-mat­ter ex­perts which strength­ened the ca­pac­i­ties of the po­lice ser­vice.

“She (Hare­wood-Christo­pher) is re­al­ly and tru­ly some­one who doesn’t have that ca­pa­bil­i­ty, but there is no one there who is pro­vid­ing her with that de­gree of as­sis­tance.

“It is not just about Stephen Williams. He ob­vi­ous­ly had very lim­it­ed suc­cess when it came to law en­force­ment and hard tar­get­ing polic­ing, that high vis­i­bil­i­ty and rapid re­sponse, so it’s a step in the right di­rec­tion, but there are about 20 dif­fer­ent fields that she needs to bring in per­sons of ex­per­tise to guide her.”

Grif­fith said he knew of Williams help­ing his sub­or­di­nates dur­ing his tenure as com­mis­sion­er and wel­comed it.

While he did not say specif­i­cal­ly what ar­eas Williams as­sist­ed with, he said it was lim­it­ed to “ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties.”

Grif­fith al­so said he felt that Williams should not be charg­ing a fee for his con­sul­ta­tion ser­vices to Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“The State gave him that op­por­tu­ni­ty to build him­self and now in re­turn, you are charg­ing the State. Your de­gree of ex­per­tise was based on your decades of ex­pe­ri­ence you ac­quired while serv­ing the State, now it is time to give back,” he said.

Grif­fith added that Williams should have made clear his role in con­sult­ing the cur­rent TTPS lead­er­ship when ru­mours of him be­ing an ad­vis­er first emerged late last year, not­ing that to dis­tin­guish be­tween ad­vi­so­ry and con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices was sim­ply “play­ing with words.”

Guardian Me­dia tried to con­tact for­mer CoP Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob for com­ment sev­er­al times but was un­suc­cess­ful.