Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal have slammed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for sug­gest­ing vi­o­lent crime was trend­ing down and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ap­par­ent sup­port of her claim.

In fact, they yes­ter­day ac­cused the CoP and Prime Min­is­ter of be­ing dis­con­nect­ed from re­al­i­ty.

Dur­ing a TTPS me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day, Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher praised her of­fi­cers’ an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives, say­ing mur­ders were trend­ing down, al­though at the time the homi­cide toll from last year to this year was on­ly a dif­fer­ence of one. Hare­wood-Christo­pher not­ed that while there were chal­lenges, there was a ze­ro per cent in­crease in the mur­der rate com­pared to a 10 per cent in­crease for the same pe­ri­od last year.

She re­peat­ed the claims dur­ing her ad­dress be­fore the In­de­pen­dence Day toast to the na­tion on Thurs­day.

There have been 393 mur­ders for the year thus far com­pared to 394 for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Dur­ing his ad­dress at the toast to the na­tion, fol­low­ing the CoP’s speech, PM Row­ley said the fig­ures were en­cour­ag­ing and en­dorsed the work of the po­lice.

“It is good news to hear that at least on this oc­ca­sion, we can see some light at the end of the tun­nel against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. If the ef­forts are sus­tained, if the new meth­ods are utilised and if we gen­uine­ly be­lieve we have the in­tegri­ty to con­front the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, at the end of the day the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will pre­vail and this pe­ri­od of chal­lenge will be a pe­ri­od to be looked up­on and say there were times we were chal­lenged but in­deed we did suc­ceed,” Row­ley said.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal, the Oropouche East MP and shad­ow Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, yes­ter­day de­scribed the re­marks from both Row­ley and Hare­wood-Christo­pher as “fright­en­ing” and ac­cused them of be­ing out of touch with re­al­i­ty.

“The or­di­nary peo­ple on the ground are aware that things are in­deed get­ting worse. I think the Prime Min­is­ter has been away from Trinidad for too long, he spends time in rel­a­tive­ly safe coun­tries and safe com­mu­ni­ties,” Mooni­lal said.

“He him­self is pro­tect­ed by about 20 se­cu­ri­ty morn­ing, noon and night, so as for him, things are get­ting bet­ter, for him things are get­ting safer, but for the or­di­nary peo­ple out here on the streets of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it is a war-zone and it is hor­ri­ble the Prime Min­is­ter shows no em­pa­thy and no com­pas­sion with the vic­tims of crime.”

Mooni­lal al­so chid­ed Hare­wood-Christo­pher for her de­scrip­tion of the sta­tis­tics, adding that her tone was sim­i­lar to that of some­one de­scrib­ing the re­sults of a by-elec­tion.

He said such se­ri­ous con­cerns should be ad­dressed and con­veyed with the nec­es­sary sense of ur­gency to the pub­lic and vic­tims of crime.

“This is se­ri­ous crime and mur­der, the most heinous of all crimes and I think the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice lacks a cer­tain lev­el of care and com­pas­sion in re­fer­ring to these dead-heat num­bers and claim­ing some type of vic­to­ry or some type of pos­i­tiv­i­ty com­ing out of this, while again the Com­mis­sion­er is aware of the wide­spread run­away crime of the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty and bru­tal­i­ty on this so­ci­ety.”

In a video state­ment, Grif­fith, who was suc­ceed­ed by Hare­wood-Christo­pher and is now leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), al­so rub­bished the CoP’s claim, de­scrib­ing it as “lu­di­crous”.

Not­ing that sev­er­al se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers were seen clap­ping in the back­ground as Hare­wood-Christo­pher de­clared the drop in se­ri­ous crime dur­ing the toast, Grif­fith ac­cused the TTPS of ac­cept­ing medi­oc­rity as a bench­mark.

“It shows the stan­dard we have reached in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. We are ac­cept­ing medi­oc­rity and we are again on par for 605 mur­ders this year and if there may be one less than last year with 604 mur­ders, Er­la Christo­pher and the se­nior of­fi­cers who ap­plaud­ed her state­ment will say we are on the right track be­cause now there has been a de­crease in the in­crease of crime.”

Grif­fith, who served as com­mis­sion­er from 2018 to 2021, was al­so crit­i­cal of Row­ley, not­ing that his en­dorse­ment of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s re­marks were dis­heart­en­ing.

He as­sert­ed that such at­ti­tudes were at­trib­uted to poor lead­er­ship and a lack of prop­er per­for­mance mea­sure­ment.

“So, he (Row­ley) like­wise, is stat­ing that if there were 605 mur­ders last year and there may be 604 mur­ders this year, he is see­ing that as a suc­cess and that is the kind of non­sense this coun­try has to en­dure be­cause of in­com­pe­tence and lack of lead­er­ship from the chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.”