Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says he ex­pects to see a bet­ter per­for­mance from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher fol­low­ing her sec­ond con­tract ex­ten­sion, not­ing that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) rat­ed her last tenure as “good.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, Im­bert said he an­tic­i­pates an im­proved tenure be­cause of the ex­pe­ri­ence Hare­wood-Christo­pher now has.

“I ex­pect to see in the sec­ond term of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice a bet­ter per­for­mance be­cause of ex­pe­ri­ence and be­cause of what I am see­ing as uni­ty with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice. A very im­por­tant point made by pre­vi­ous Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Stephen) Williams, he said that she now has some­thing that oth­er com­mis­sion­ers nev­er had: three ap­point­ed Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice and these deputies have dif­fer­ent func­tions. Some will be in ad­min­is­tra­tion. Some will be in op­er­a­tions. You now have a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and three ap­point­ed Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice so I do ex­pect to see a per­for­mance im­prove­ment.”

He not­ed that the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion had thrown its sup­port be­hind Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ex­ten­sion, say­ing it is a sign that po­lice of­fi­cers are ready and will­ing to work with her.

The Cab­i­net grant­ed Hare­wood-Christo­pher a one-year ex­ten­sion of her con­tract as CoP ear­li­er this week, as her ini­tial tenure ex­pired.

While there is agree­ment in some quar­ters about the de­ci­sion, the Op­po­si­tion, the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance and oth­er stake­hold­ers dis­agree on the grounds of con­tin­ued mur­ders and vi­o­lent crimes.

Ex­plain­ing the Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion again yes­ter­day, Im­bert said they learned that the PoLSC had re­viewed Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s per­for­mance for March 2023 and Feb­ru­ary 2024, com­plet­ed its as­sess­ment and pre­pared an eval­u­a­tion re­port. It in­di­cat­ed that when it tab­u­lat­ed her scores un­der var­i­ous ad­min­is­tra­tive and polic­ing cat­e­gories, they were good.

“At the end of the day, they told us in writ­ing that she had a per­for­mance rat­ing of good. The per­for­mance rat­ings ranged from fair, good, very good, ex­cel­lent and ob­vi­ous­ly, bad. That is a rat­ing as well. She did not get a fair rat­ing. She did not get a bad rat­ing. She got a good rat­ing, which meant that her scores in all the var­i­ous ar­eas, and it is very com­pre­hen­sive, were good,” Im­bert said.

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing that cor­re­spon­dence, he said the Gov­ern­ment had a choice of ex­tend­ing the tenure of a CoP who has re­ceived a good rat­ing from an in­de­pen­dent body set up to as­sess her per­for­mance or se­lect some­one else. A new ap­point­ment would mean the PolSC would have to gen­er­ate an Or­der of Mer­it List and sub­mit it to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, who then has to no­ti­fy the Par­lia­ment. There would then be a par­lia­ment de­bate and de­ci­sion.

Im­bert said the PolSC would pick a Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) to act when­ev­er there was a va­can­cy in the CoP’s of­fice in the past. Last April, the PolSC start­ed the search for a new CoP, which can take over a year to com­plete be­fore send­ing a mer­it list to the Pres­i­dent.

“One does not know when the ex­er­cise will be com­plet­ed, but if one goes on prac­tice and his­to­ry, you are look­ing to­wards the end of De­cem­ber 2024.”

Un­der­stand­ing this, Im­bert said if Cab­i­net did not ex­tend Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract, the PolSC would like­ly choose one of the DCPs to act. How­ev­er, he said the TTPS has three new DCPs who are untest­ed in their po­si­tions.

“We felt that in all the cir­cum­stances, the best thing to do was to ex­tend, be­cause on what ba­sis are we go­ing to say we re­ject the sci­en­tif­ic as­sess­ment by the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion of the com­mis­sion­er’s per­for­mance? Are we go­ing to go on feel­ings?”

Re­spond­ing to a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, Im­bert said there were no le­gal chal­lenges to the ex­ten­sion, cit­ing a law­suit UNC ac­tivist Ravi B Ma­haraj brought against the State for a pre­vi­ous ex­ten­sion.

Im­bert not­ed that Jus­tice Rahim up­held Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion and the Court of Ap­peal af­firmed it. In the de­ci­sion, Rahim said the ide­al sit­u­a­tion would be con­sul­ta­tion with the PoLSC be­fore grant­i­ng a sub­mis­sion.

Im­bert ex­plained that the Cab­i­net was not legal­ly re­quired to con­sult the PolSC be­fore de­cid­ing on an ex­ten­sion. He said there is a big dif­fer­ence be­tween ex­tend­ing the term of a CoP and ap­point­ing a new one, as the law de­vel­oped in 2006 un­der po­lice re­form leg­is­la­tion in­cludes a pro­vi­sion that the Cab­i­net can ex­tend the term of the COP for up to three years in one-year in­ter­vals. As the PoLSC’s man­date is to as­sess the CoP’s per­for­mance us­ing a sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach, Im­bert said the Cab­i­net con­sult­ed with the body as rec­om­mend­ed.