Gov­ern­ment has con­firmed that Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher will not re­turn as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, opt­ing to buy out her 66 days of ac­cu­mu­lat­ed va­ca­tion leave and not re­new her con­tract. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Cab­i­net made the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, adding that Gov­ern­ment act­ed “with­in the law.”

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said the buy­out was aimed at en­sur­ing con­ti­nu­ity in the po­lice ser­vice.  How­ev­er, he was un­able to put a fig­ure on the amount to be paid.

“I’m not cer­tain, terms of dol­lars and cents, how much it would cost, I think she had some­thing like be­tween 66 and 70 days leave in­side. The Gov­ern­ment did not think that it made sense to have Miss Christo­pher re­port to du­ty for half of a day or one day, and then to re­vert to a po­si­tion if she was not ex­tend­ed. I don’t think that the mind of the Gov­ern­ment was to ex­tend her, that we would have an ac­count­ing of­fi­cer and not a po­lice com­mis­sion­er in charge of the po­lice ser­vice.”

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, in a me­dia re­lease on Wednes­day, first an­nounced it was send­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher on leave and con­firmed that act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who has been in the post since Feb­ru­ary 6, will re­main in of­fice. 

When asked to com­ment on the en­tire sit­u­a­tion, from the ar­rest of a sit­ting com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, to her leav­ing in what was de­scribed as a con­fus­ing man­ner, he said the whole sit­u­a­tion was shock­ing.

“I mean, a po­lice com­mis­sion­er, be it the sub­ject of an ar­rest, that is some­thing that is un­usu­al. It’s a sit­u­a­tion which we met and get­ting back to your orig­i­nal ques­tion, we dealt with the cards that we were play­ing as straight as we could play them,” Je­re­mie said. “So what we thought made more sense, re­mem­ber­ing that we did not cre­ate this sit­u­a­tion, this is a sit­u­a­tion which we in­her­it­ed. We felt that it would be bet­ter for the po­lice ser­vice to have a po­lice com­mis­sion­er in place through­out the pe­ri­od lead­ing up to the new Par­lia­ment, and that meant that Mr Ben­jamin, as the per­son in the chair, should con­tin­ue.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher, how­ev­er, has re­peat­ed­ly sig­nalled her in­ten­tion to take le­gal ac­tion through her at­tor­ney, Pamela El­der, SC.

Je­re­mie side­stepped con­cerns over po­ten­tial court costs or dam­ages to be paid, “So we’ll deal with that if it comes, that’s a hy­po­thet­i­cal, and per­haps I should not be speak­ing about.”

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ad­dressed the prospect of le­gal ac­tion, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment did noth­ing il­le­gal.

“This is a free coun­try. Every cit­i­zen is en­ti­tled to seek le­gal re­dress. If you don’t use the cour­t­hous­es, what do you end up with? So if she does... we’ll deal with that. But we have act­ed with­in the law. We have done noth­ing un­to­ward.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed that Gov­ern­ment would pro­ceed with the process for se­lect­ing a sub­stan­tive Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

“To­day, I will give you the com­mit­ment as soon as the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion sends their list of per­sons for Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, as soon as we re­ceive it, we will act in ac­cor­dance with the law to have it laid in the Par­lia­ment and de­bat­ed.”

Asked whether any leg­isla­tive changes would be con­sid­ered to im­prove the ap­point­ment process, she said: “Not in the short term. But cer­tain­ly we will con­sid­er changes to the law. I think in the short term, I re­al­ly would await the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s rec­om­men­da­tions, which were sent to the Pres­i­dent. I will not go and take away the mer­it list from the Pres­i­dent.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was sus­pend­ed on Jan­u­ary 31 fol­low­ing her ar­rest over al­leged mis­con­duct in the ac­qui­si­tion of sniper ri­fles and equip­ment for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency. Though nev­er charged, she spent two nights at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion. Her law­suit against the sus­pen­sion was dis­missed on Mon­day.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­turned to the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing that same day, prompt­ing the PolSC to in­struct her to wait. She even­tu­al­ly signed the re­in­state­ment let­ter at 6.21 pm Wednes­day—hours af­ter the min­istry had al­ready di­rect­ed her to pro­ceed on leave.