The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) is push­ing back against crit­ics of the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ex­tend Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s tenure by one year.

The Cab­i­net ex­tend­ed her tenure on Mon­day, 24 hours be­fore she cel­e­brat­ed her 62nd birth­day yes­ter­day. 

Con­grat­u­lat­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher on her ex­ten­sion, TTPSS­WA pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son said this coun­try’s most dif­fi­cult job is that of CoP. He fur­ther slammed crit­ics for blam­ing her, as well as po­lice of­fi­cers, for mur­ders while fail­ing to hold oth­er agen­cies ac­count­able. 

“When we look at the modus by which per­sons are los­ing their lives and the fre­quen­cy with which firearms are be­ing used, and all of us, every sin­gle one of us knows that firearms are not man­u­fac­tured in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said. 

“We have seen ef­forts be­ing made by the po­lice to rid the streets of the firearms, but the firearms are not be­ing made here. There needs to be an in­creas­ing ef­fort in terms of be­ing able to ad­dress how these firearms are com­ing in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, and we need to call those both at Cus­toms, Im­mi­gra­tion, and the Coast Guard to al­so ac­count,” he added. 

Dick­son al­so trained his guns on the Ju­di­cia­ry, which he chal­lenged to de­ny bail to in­di­vid­u­als charged with mur­der. Mur­der ac­cused were re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody with­out bail up un­til 2022, when the Privy Coun­cil de­liv­ered a land­mark rul­ing, bring­ing an end to the au­to­mat­ic de­nial of bail to those charged with the cap­i­tal of­fence. 

“Let all those who have their part to play play their part and ac­cept cri­tiquing. Let our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem do some­thing in terms of pro­tect­ing the law-abid­ing; per­sons are com­mit­ting mur­ders, go­ing through and get­ting bail, and com­ing back out,” he stat­ed. 

He added that the rise in crime was not be­cause of an in­ef­fec­tive CoP or po­lice of­fi­cers, but due to a break­down across all sec­tors of so­ci­ety. He said the crime fight should start in homes, schools, and com­mu­ni­ties be­fore it be­comes a po­lice of­fi­cers’ prob­lem. 

  How­ev­er, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der scoffed at Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ex­ten­sion as he ques­tioned the role and func­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC). 

He said their fail­ure to screen can­di­dates for the post of top cop be­fore her ex­ten­sion ex­pired, proved they had no in­ter­est in find­ing a new sub­stan­tive po­lice com­mis­sion­er. 

“You ex­tend­ed the com­mis­sion­er by a year (in Feb­ru­ary 2023). Im­me­di­ate­ly up­on that ex­ten­sion, you should have be­gun the process of find­ing a prop­er com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. You wait­ed un­til April of the next year? This is a sham!” 

Mean­while, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) said Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ex­ten­sion re­flects the gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued mis­han­dling of crime.  

The par­ty called it a cha­rade to act as though “all is well,”  lest the Gov­ern­ment prove it failed to hire a com­pe­tent of­fi­cer. The COP added that dis­miss­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher would have raised ques­tions over the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter’s fail­ure to re­tain Gary Grif­fith. 

“To have re­moved the CoP would have meant that she had failed, there­by re­sult­ing in show­cas­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to hire a com­pe­tent of­fi­cer; to ex­ac­er­bate this, it would have al­so in­di­cat­ed that the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s fail­ure in jus­ti­fy­ing the re­moval of the pre­vi­ous hold­er of that of­fice,” the re­lease said. 

On the con­trary, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) urged all na­tion­al lead­ers to ral­ly be­hind the top cop. TTCIC pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj said the CoP must be ad­e­quate­ly re­sourced if she is to do her job ef­fec­tive­ly. 

“As com­mis­sion­er, Ms Hare­wood must have full sup­port from the na­tion­al lead­ers and be ad­e­quate­ly re­sourced if she is to be ef­fec­tive. The in­ter­nal man­age­ment of the TTPS needs to be ad­dressed, from re­cruit­ment to re­source al­lo­ca­tion; mit­i­ga­tion mech­a­nisms must al­so be prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed to be sus­tain­able. De­tec­tion and ev­i­dence gath­er­ing lead­ing to suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion is a key de­liv­er­able for the po­lice,” she said. 

“While there is no quick fix, the one-year gives the com­mis­sion­er a valu­able ex­ten­sion to man­age ef­fec­tive­ly, there­by giv­ing the so­ci­ety the com­fort that progress is be­ing made to re­claim free­doms from es­ca­lat­ing crime,” Ma­haraj added.