The most­ly un­suc­cess­ful ef­forts by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to win pub­lic con­fi­dence suf­fered a ma­jor blow this week, when an au­dio clip of a crime vic­tim’s tele­phone call to a po­lice sta­tion be­gan mak­ing the rounds on so­cial me­dia.

Law en­force­ment in this coun­try al­ready strug­gles to live up to the TTPS mot­to, “To Pro­tect and Serve With Pride,” and the qual­i­ties it should in­spire were lack­ing in the tone and re­sponse of a fe­male of­fi­cer when she in­ter­act­ed with a vic­tim of crime.

Al­though Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher wast­ed no time in con­demn­ing the of­fi­cer’s un­pro­fes­sion­al­ism and poor cus­tomer ser­vice, dam­age has al­ready been done. The promised in­ves­ti­ga­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against the fe­male con­sta­ble in­volved in the in­ci­dent are un­like­ly to quell the pub­lic out­rage over it.

In fact, it high­lights the ex­tent of the cri­sis of height­ened crime, low­ered pub­lic con­fi­dence and the lack of progress with polic­ing re­forms.

There are two wor­ry­ing el­e­ments to the in­ci­dent - the dis­cour­te­ous, terse re­sponse of the of­fi­cer to a vic­tim of house­break­ing and lar­ce­ny and the fact the call was made to re­port the tardy po­lice re­sponse to the crime.

It is very un­like­ly this was an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent but even if it was, wide cir­cu­la­tion of the voice clip had the ef­fect of erod­ing al­ready poor pub­lic per­cep­tions of the TTPS.

It has un­der­mined ef­forts that have been tak­ing place for quite a few years, through town hall meet­ings, me­dia pro­grammes and oth­er out­reach­es, to por­tray po­lice of­fi­cers as be­ing ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic.

These strate­gies to im­prove re­la­tions be­tween the po­lice and the pub­lic and gain sup­port for pre­vent­ing and con­trol­ling crime have had on­ly lim­it­ed suc­cess but kept lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open be­tween the TTPS and the pub­lic.

This is more nec­es­sary now be­cause the cur­rent Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, un­like her pre­de­ces­sors, does not make her­self avail­able to cit­i­zens, pre­fer­ring to com­mu­ni­cate through press re­leas­es and so­cial me­dia posts.

This is not a win­ning strat­e­gy, as she is at the helm of a TTPS with an im­age so taint­ed by cor­rup­tion, dis­crim­i­na­tion and ex­ces­sive use of force, that the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) faces an up­hill task in­ves­ti­gat­ing the nu­mer­ous re­ports filed.

Among the chal­lenges for Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her team is that less than a week in­to the new year, there are al­ready more mur­ders than days.

Crim­i­nal gangs con­tin­ue to have the up­per hand, wag­ing war against un­der­world ri­vals open­ly and in broad day­light be­cause the risk of ar­rest and con­vic­tion is so low. Em­bold­ened by the so­phis­ti­cat­ed high-pow­ered weapons to which they have easy ac­cess, their vi­o­lent ex­changes of­ten take place on the streets, some­times in close prox­im­i­ty to po­lice sta­tions.

Add to that an of­fi­cer who is not on­ly re­luc­tant to as­sist a mem­ber of the pub­lic but is down­right rude and dis­mis­sive of that cit­i­zen’s plight, and it is clear that polic­ing in T&T has plunged to a new low.

Nei­ther pro­tec­tion nor ser­vice was of­fered to that crime vic­tim — a sit­u­a­tion, that re­gret­tably, might be the norm rather than an ex­cep­tion.

In her New Year’s Day mes­sage, Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher ap­pealed for pub­lic sup­port in the fight against crime. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, her call is not like­ly to elic­it many pos­i­tive re­spons­es, not when con­fi­dence in the TTPS re­mains so low.