Jesse Ramdeo

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice-des­ig­nate Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher dodged the fir­ing line yes­ter­day, af­ter she failed to ap­pear be­fore what would have been her first Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing since be­ing se­lect­ed for the po­si­tion by Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

How­ev­er, while Hare­wood-Christo­pher gave what ap­peared a valid rea­son for her ab­sence, JSC mem­bers on both sides ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment in her ab­sence, with an­swers be­ing sought from those who filled in for her dur­ing the in­quiry in­to the an­ti-crime strate­gies im­ple­ment­ed by the TTPS to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Among those to rep­ri­mand Hare­wood-Christo­pher was JSC chair­man Kei­th Scot­land, who said her ab­sence im­pact­ed the course of yes­ter­day’s in­quiry.

“The com­mit­tee want­ed to hear from the Com­mis­sion­er-des­ig­nate, the com­mit­tee had set its work set out on that path­way, hav­ing sent out the in­vi­ta­tion and the com­mit­tee wants to con­vey the crit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice-des­ig­nate at­tend­ing be­fore us on the next oc­ca­sion. We can­not un­der­es­ti­mate or un­der­state the cru­cial at­ten­dance of that per­son­al at­ten­dance, not just for the com­mit­tee but the coun­try at large.”

De­spite his ap­par­ent rep­ri­mand, Scot­land told mem­bers that he did re­ceive a cor­re­spon­dence from Hare­wood-Christo­pher ex­plain­ing her ab­sence.

“We re­ceived a cor­re­spon­dence yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, af­ter re­ceiv­ing an ini­tial con­fir­ma­tion that is­sues that are ur­gent and crit­i­cal to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­quired the Com­mis­sion­er-des­ig­nate’s ur­gent at­ten­tion and she was un­able to at­tend this af­ter­noon,” he said.

How­ev­er, com­mit­tee mem­ber Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al said with the pub­lic plead­ing for an an­swer to the spate of vi­o­lent crimes and mur­ders, mem­bers were pre­pared to put point­ed ques­tions to Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her ab­sence was dis­ap­point­ing.

“The Com­mis­sion­er-des­ig­nate has been act­ing as the Com­mis­sion­er for some time, has been a mem­ber of the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive for some time and there­fore must be aware of the im­por­tance of these com­mit­tee meet­ings and these com­mit­tees. It is the mech­a­nism through which the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Par­lia­ment re­al­ly get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­ro­gate state func­tionar­ies and at a time when we have record-break­ing mur­der rate last year, we have a record-break­ing mur­der rate in Jan­u­ary and what prompt­ed our re­quest for a meet­ing to­day is a se­ries of re­ports of TTPS para­pher­na­lia or im­i­ta­tion para­pher­na­lia, as well as oth­er arms of law en­force­ment-marked am­mu­ni­tion, be­ing found on crime scenes.”

Mem­ber Ran­dall Mitchell, in what seemed to be a de­fence of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ab­sence, spec­u­lat­ed that the great­est show on earth may have led to her no- show.

“I too strug­gled to come here to­day and I’d imag­ine that while we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some dif­fi­cul­ty, we are al­so in a pe­ri­od where a lot of strate­gic plan­ning must be done by the po­lice be­cause we ex­pect a lot of vis­i­tors and ac­tiv­i­ties over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od and I think while the of­fi­cers be­fore this com­mit­tee can help, I think it is rea­son­able that the head of an or­gan­i­sa­tion, un­der­stand­ing the buck stops with that head, would be en­gaged in the press­ing mat­ter of plan­ning for the ex­e­cu­tion of Car­ni­val 2023.”

Act­ing DCP (In­ves­ti­ga­tions and In­tel­li­gence) Curt Sim­mons led the TTPS’ ex­ec­u­tive dur­ing the ses­sion and re­spond­ed to con­cerns raised by mem­bers Lutch­me­di­al and Dr Roodal Mooni­lal of TTPS para­pher­na­lia be­ing found at crime scenes.

He stat­ed that steps, in­clud­ing pos­si­ble leg­isla­tive changes, were be­ing tak­en to ad­dress the mat­ter.

“In­ter­nal­ly, we have in­struct­ed that on­ly our Task Forces through­out the na­tion are al­lowed to use cer­tain types of kit and that is the blue one. The charge room per­son­nel will re­vert to the blue and grey as we know it. The bal­a­cla­va, that mask which came out dur­ing the COVID-19, a num­ber of of­fi­cers were hold­ing on to it. We have in­struct­ed that that be re­moved when per­sons are deal­ing di­rect­ly with the pub­lic, Sim­mons told the JSC.

“We have looked at our leg­is­la­tion, which ac­tu­al­ly speaks against it, and I think oth­er agen­cies, most­ly se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, would have been al­lowed to use items that re­sem­ble po­lice kits and we are plan­ning a meet­ing to ad­dress that is­sue.”

The act­ing DCP al­so gave an as­sur­ance that Car­ni­val 2023 will be one of the safest. He said a tar­get­ed ap­proach will be tak­en when it comes to beef­ing up se­cu­ri­ty.

Apart from the call out of all of­fi­cers on leave to strength­en squads, Sim­mons pledged that re­sponse times will be faster than be­fore.

“We are try­ing to gauge and mea­sure the re­sponse that we’re hav­ing so that we can re­act to our sit­u­a­tions that we an­tic­i­pate, and we are an­tic­i­pat­ing things, not that we are hop­ing for things, but we are an­tic­i­pat­ing things. So, we are putting things in place to deal with the things we an­tic­i­pate, there are cer­tain places that tend to be trou­bled at dif­fer­ent times of the Car­ni­val.”