Gail Alexan­der

Con­grat­u­la­tions from some - and calls for new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to tour T&T and hear peo­ple’s crime is­sues.

This af­ter Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day ap­proved her for the post in a vote by both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher topped the scores on the mer­it list sent by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on Mon­day to the Pres­i­dent. For­mer act­ing CoP Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob was ranked sec­ond on the list and as­sis­tant Supt Anand Rame­sar third, of­fi­cials said.

Ja­cob said he learned the news of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­fir­ma­tion when he re­turned from an er­rand.

“And I sent her a con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage via What’s App,” he said.

The mes­sage stat­ed, “Con­grat­u­la­tions, con­grat­u­la­tions and God speed.”

It al­so fea­tured emo­jis of big ap­plause, a pink bal­loon, a cham­pagne bot­tle pop­ping, plus par­ty and par­ty pop­pers.

Ja­cob said he stood ready with as­sis­tance and ad­vice if nec­es­sary, as he’d stat­ed in a mes­sage to TTPS of­fi­cers on Jan­u­ary 21 - the day af­ter he re­tired - when he’d al­so urged them to sup­port Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“My views re­main the same,” Ja­cob added.

In that mes­sage, Ja­cob told of­fi­cers it was a plea­sure work­ing with them for the past 42 years and notwith­stand­ing the many chal­lenges, his ex­pe­ri­ence had been quite plea­sur­able.

For­mer act­ing CoP Stephen Williams said he too con­grat­u­lat­ed Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

For­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith, who’s abroad, said, “Giv­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to Hare­wood-Christo­pher via in­form­ing the me­dia is cos­met­ic. I com­mu­ni­cat­ed with her, giv­ing her my sup­port over a week ago, as the choice by the Gov­ern­ment was well known, so the re­sult was ob­vi­ous.

“It is ex­pect­ed that every law-abid­ing cit­i­zens would hope that she suc­ceeds. In­ter­est­ing to note that UNC ab­stained when I was nom­i­nat­ed in 2019 but agreed to vote in favour of the nom­i­nee this time around. In­ter­est­ing,” Grif­fith said.

“When I went up for CoP, one UNC speak­er spent 45 min­utes at­tack­ing me, but Er­la was more for­tu­nate.”

Grif­fith not­ed that he’d re­cent­ly ad­vised Christo­pher not to be po­lit­i­cal­ly swayed if se­lect­ed, to re­sist be­ing used as a po­lit­i­cal pawn in any­one’s games and to re­mem­ber her oath in of­fice is to be of ser­vice to the peo­ple of T&T and not be po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed or con­trolled even if it costs her the post.

T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion head Gideon Dick­son said: “The peo­ple have wit­nessed an his­toric event in that we’ve seen the first woman po­lice of­fi­cer con­firmed in the rank of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.”

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion is pre­pared to give their fullest sup­port, as she has demon­strat­ed over the past 40 years of ded­i­ca­tion, de­vo­tion and com­mit­ment to the peo­ple and TTPS.

“We’re see­ing the ush­er­ing in of a new era and the shat­ter­ing of the glass ceil­ing and we stand ready to pro­vide what­ev­er sup­port she re­quires at this time to as­sist in al­le­vi­at­ing fear of crime and as­sist in crime man­age­ment,” he said.

Dick­son said Hare­wood-Christo­pher com­ing from the TTPS’ bow­els would un­der­stand the hard­ships faced by of­fi­cers and the as­so­ci­a­tion ex­pects she’ll do her best to en­sure “our wel­fare is­sues are ad­dressed in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

“That be­ing said, we wish her all the best and com­mend her on this his­toric mile­stone; and it al­so sets the barom­e­ters for fe­males in T&T ... she’ll be called on to uni­fy the ranks of the First and Sec­ond Di­vi­sions to achieve our strate­gic goals.”

Say­ing she alone couldn’t re­pel crime, Dick­son called on peo­ple to “say some­thing if they see some­thing.”

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CC­CIC) pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj al­so they are ready to work with Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

Say­ing the CCIC has al­ways co­op­er­at­ed and as­sist­ed the po­lice, he said they want to see a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes in Cen­tral.

“The re­cent up­surge in se­ri­ous crimes in the bor­ough now makes us a crime hotspot in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion. As part of our ini­tia­tives to sup­port the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and make the bor­ough a safer en­vi­ron­ment for shop­pers, busi­ness­es and in­vestors, the Cham­ber wel­comes any ini­tia­tives and pro­grammes that would pro­vide a sense of se­cu­ri­ty.

“Crime has cer­tain­ly been a de­ter­rent to the growth of busi­ness­es in the bor­ough. We are ea­ger to work with the au­thor­i­ties to re­store the con­fi­dence of our cit­i­zens and mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty so that Ch­agua­nas and by ex­ten­sion, the wider econ­o­my, can at­tract more in­vest­ments and busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties in the quick­est pos­si­ble time.”

While some Diego Mar­tin busi­ness­men called for Hare­wood-Christo­pher to em­ploy “tan­gi­bly seen proven mod­ern in­no­v­a­tive “strate­gies to re­duce the very high mur­der rate,” some cit­i­zens were doubt­ful she could re­duce it be­yond last year’s record high.

Oth­ers called for her to em­bark on a na­tion­wide tour of all 41 con­stituen­cies and speak to res­i­dents.

“If peo­ple don’t see will­ing­ness to reach out, she fail be­fore she start,” a La Ro­main re­tiree said.

— With re­port­ing by Shas­tri Boodan