An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

“Do not judge me by my suc­cess­es; judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

—Nel­son Man­dela

Many men of­ten make a pact with the dev­il in ex­change for rich­es and suc­cess but Ju­nior Ben­jamin made a promise to serve the Lord faith­ful­ly if He helped him to over­come the ma­jor hur­dles he faced as a child and which fol­lowed him in­to adult­hood to the post he cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pies as the act­ing head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

While he cred­its that faith and trust for bring­ing him to where he is to­day, the soft-spo­ken fa­ther of one said his late moth­er’s words, ‘If God has some­thing for you, no­body could take it away from you,’ still echo in his heart.

Pro­vid­ing an in­ti­mate glimpse in­to his life, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Ben­jamin, 54, who cel­e­brat­ed 100 days in of­fice on Sat­ur­day (May 10), ad­mit­ted he faced aca­d­e­m­ic strug­gles grow­ing up as a young boy in Canaan, To­ba­go, as he was un­able to read and write prop­er­ly.

“I try to en­cour­age peo­ple to un­der­stand that it is not how you start, but it is how you fin­ish,” Ben­jamin said.

As the on­ly son of Cyn­thia and Llewellyn Ben­jamin, he grew up with four sis­ters in very hum­ble be­gin­nings.

While they all at­tend­ed school and earned good grades, Ben­jamin ad­mit­ted, “I strug­gled in school in terms of my abil­i­ty to read and write.”

De­ter­mined to do his best de­spite the set­backs, he cred­it­ed his re­silient mind­set for be­ing able to over­come the hur­dles that arose ear­ly on.

As a young boy, Ben­jamin at­tend­ed the Scar­bor­ough Methodist Pri­ma­ry School, where he wrote the then Com­mon En­trance ex­am.

It was at this junc­ture that an 11-year-old Ben­jamin made his first deal with Je­sus.

“I was do­ing the Eng­lish Lan­guage sec­tion and read­ing so slow that the time was up, and I had be­tween 20 to 30 more ques­tions to go,” he said.

Mov­ing on to the Math, Ben­jamin said he lat­er re­turned and an­swered those ques­tions by guess.

“Even though I an­swered it by guess, this is where my faith re­al­ly came alive when I asked God…I made a deal then...I said ‘God, if I could on­ly pass for my first choice or my sec­ond choice, I will serve you the rest of my life’.”

When the re­sults were an­nounced, Ben­jamin was thrilled be­yond mea­sure as he passed for his sec­ond choice, Scar­bor­ough Ju­nior Sec­ondary School, which is where he re­al­ly want­ed to go.

Al­low­ing him­self to be­lieve in mir­a­cles, he said, “That day is when I ac­tu­al­ly gave my life to Christ.”

De­spite the move to the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary Com­pre­hen­sive School, Ben­jamin’s aca­d­e­m­ic chal­lenges con­tin­ued. Hop­ing to cul­ti­vate an out­let of es­cape through sports, the TTPS head said, “I was very ath­let­ic and rep­re­sent­ed To­ba­go in track and field, and played foot­ball with the likes of Dwight Yorke and oth­ers. What I lacked in aca­d­e­mics, I made up for in sports.”

De­spite his best ef­forts, sport was not enough to save Ben­jamin and faced with a choice in his fi­nal year, he opt­ed to pur­sue his stud­ies.

His best shot re­sult­ed in him grad­u­at­ing with a full CXC cer­tifi­cate, in­clud­ing 1 One, 2 Twos and three Threes.

Laugh­ing as he ad­mit­ted to be­ing sur­prised, Ben­jamin re­called just how bad the sit­u­a­tion had been.

He said, “Things were so bad that in my fi­nal year in Form Five, Win­ford James was my Eng­lish teacher and he ac­tu­al­ly came in­to Eng­lish class and asked who is Ju­nior Ben­jamin.

“He said ‘Mr Ben­jamin, stand up’. And as I stood up, he said ‘Mr Ben­jamin, your spelling is atro­cious and I thought atro­cious was a good word’. This was the first time I was hear­ing it, so I said thank you sir, thank you, thank you.

“Then I got 18 out 100 and knew it was not a good word. That mo­ment is where I ac­tu­al­ly recog­nised that if God didn’t help me, I wasn’t go­ing to do well in school.”

Dou­bling down on his ef­forts to make his par­ents proud and al­so make some­thing of him­self, Ben­jamin re­peat­ed two sub­jects and wrote one more, walk­ing away with a to­tal of sev­en O-Lev­el pass­es.

At the same time, he was grad­u­at­ing from high school in 1989, there was a call for Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers to ap­ply.

Ben­jamin saw this as the an­swer to his dream as a child to be­come an SRP just like his dad.

“I wrote the SRP ex­am and asked God for my name to be called. So, when the re­sults came out and my name was called and I was di­rect­ed on one side…that was my hap­pi­est day on Earth,” he said.

“But then I saw some­one I had gone to school with who was even more dunce than me and I thought he pass...it just seemed so strange…and as I was try­ing to grasp that he had passed, all I heard was that all whose names were just called, you failed the ex­am and it was time to leave. That was my blow.”

He added, “I went home with tears in my eyes and asked God, how could you do this? He and I had this lit­tle ex­change where he said, ‘you asked for your name to be called and your name was called so you got what you want­ed’.”

De­clar­ing, “God is a god of an­oth­er chance,” even as his moth­er tried to cheer him up, Ben­jamin said their tele­phone rang a short while lat­er and it was the po­lice head­quar­ters.

Some­one on the oth­er end said: “We have 33 peo­ple. We need 35 and you are the high­est fail­ure, so come back up.”

Ben­jamin re­called, “I came in as the high­est fail­ure in 1989. I ac­tu­al­ly saw my pa­per and I got 49 out 100. But the high­est fail­ure came back in 2021 as the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent of that said di­vi­sion and is now sit­ting be­fore you as the head of the TTPS.”

Sit­ting qui­et­ly be­hind his desk as he said he still does not take any­thing for grant­ed, Ben­jamin ad­vised, “I tell peo­ple now not to just ask for what you want but what you re­al­ly need.”

Pro­pelled by the need to help peo­ple, Ben­jamin said he de­cid­ed to be­come a pas­tor, as things in his life weren’t go­ing right, and in 1993, he ap­plied for and was grant­ed a three-year leave of ab­sence from the TTPS, dur­ing which time he be­came an or­dained min­is­ter. At the end of it, he was of­fered a full-time po­si­tion as a clerk in the Fin­ger­print De­part­ment, which he humbly ac­cept­ed.

In 1998, Ben­jamin grad­u­at­ed with a de­gree in The­ol­o­gy and in 1999-2000, when the op­por­tu­ni­ty arose for SRPs to be draft­ed in­to the TTPS, Ben­jamin was urged to ap­ply and sur­prised him­self by plac­ing first in the ex­am.

Des­per­ate­ly want­i­ng to at least walk away with a tro­phy for his ef­forts as a qual­i­fied drill and firearms in­struc­tor at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, Ben­jamin was again dis­ap­point­ed af­ter falling out with his squad mates, which led to him be­ing by­passed.

“Com­ing out of that, I con­tin­ued to push my­self in terms of be­ing true to who I am, help­ing peo­ple, mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the lit­tle that I did,” he said.

He es­tab­lished the Po­lice Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship out of the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, but was then en­cour­aged by old­er of­fi­cers to pur­sue pro­mo­tion­al ex­ams.

Look­ing back on all he has had to over­come to get where he is to­day, Ben­jamin said, “That is why I don’t ever look down on peo­ple. I take the time to lis­ten and talk to every­one.”

He said he of­ten vis­its Ser­vol so he can coun­sel and en­cour­age young peo­ple to dream.

“I tell them I am a liv­ing ex­am­ple that life is re­al­ly what you make it.”

Ad­mit­ting he still goes the ex­tra mile and reads things twice de­spite be­ing the hold­er of nu­mer­ous busi­ness and the­o­log­i­cal qual­i­fi­ca­tions, Ben­jamin, who is al­so an at­tor­ney at law, be­lieves he has been able to nar­row the gap be­tween SRPs and TTPS of­fi­cers since as­sum­ing the post of act­ing CoP on Feb­ru­ary 6.

Hav­ing worked both beats, Ben­jamin said the TTPS is mov­ing full steam ahead with the roll-out of their strate­gic plan for 2025-2027.

Ad­mit­ting that his in­stal­la­tion as the act­ing CoP had come at a time when the TTPS was at its low­est, he said, “The abil­i­ty to meet with of­fi­cers and share with them, for them to see a dif­fer­ent type of peo­ple-cen­tred lead­er­ship, has helped to bring some lev­el of hope.”

Asked about his re­la­tion­ship with CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was cleared of charges in a probe in­to the ac­qui­si­tion of two sniper weapons for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) on the week­end, Ben­jamin veered away from dis­cussing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion that took place.

In­stead, he said, “I have al­ways looked at Ma’am Christo­pher as a moth­er, men­tor and role mod­el. She will al­ways be like that to me, in my eyes.”

While their man­age­ment styles dif­fer vast­ly, Ben­jamin said both will al­ways have the in­ter­est of all of­fi­cers at heart and as such, will work to en­sure they are looked af­ter as much is ex­pect­ed from them.

“My aim is to make the TTPS an em­ploy­er of choice, rather than a ne­ces­si­ty of choice,” he said.

He ex­plained, “Plen­ty peo­ple are join­ing the ser­vice be­cause they want a sta­ble job, things hard, et cetera.”

Seek­ing to dis­abuse per­sons of this no­tion, he said, “Peo­ple must want to join the TTPS be­cause it is a no­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion…be­cause of how we treat our em­ploy­ees and be­cause we bring a lev­el of val­ue and pride to the so­ci­ety.”

In­di­cat­ing they had drift­ed away from that, he said, “When peo­ple see of­fi­cers now, they see cor­rup­tion and all man­ner of com­plaints. We need to re­store that sense of moral­i­ty and trust, and that is my aim.

“I have worked with some of the great­est men and women in the ser­vice of the TTPS…and they in turn, have be­come my great­est strength.”

Turn­ing to how he is man­ag­ing to bal­ance the chal­lenges of his cur­rent post with that of his fam­i­ly life, Ben­jamin praised his wife Maria Padil­la-Ben­jamin for be­ing the glue hold­ing it all to­geth­er. He joked that some­times he needs a gen­tle re­minder, which she is not afraid to de­liv­er.

“She is my hero, she is my mo­ti­va­tion, she is my kite!”

Ben­jamin al­so beamed with pride as he spoke of watch­ing his daugh­ter Jea­nine-Marie grow dai­ly and re­ferred to her as “my every­thing.”

“My wife and daugh­ter is that string that keeps me con­nect­ed to the ground, so even though I am fly­ing, I am not fly­ing by my­self. They are the wind be­neath my wings, they are my sup­port.”