Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher was not well known out­side of law en­force­ment cir­cles when she emerged as the top choice on the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s mer­it list that was sub­mit­ted to Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes ear­li­er this year.

But her ex­pe­ri­ence and qual­i­fi­ca­tions were im­pres­sive enough to get unan­i­mous ap­proval in Par­lia­ment, clear­ing the way for her his­to­ry-mak­ing ap­point­ment as the coun­try’s first fe­male Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

The good­will she still en­joys from politi­cians and cit­i­zens pro­vides an ex­tra­or­di­nary op­por­tu­ni­ty for the CoP to gain pub­lic trust and in­spire pos­i­tive change as she leads the fight against crime. How­ev­er, that trust and con­fi­dence can be quick­ly erod­ed by com­mu­ni­ca­tions blun­ders, which is the best way to de­scribe the CoP’s com­ments to Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) mem­bers ear­li­er this week.

Her ad­mis­sion that re­duc­ing the mur­der rate is still “a bit be­yond” the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the TTPS was bad enough. What made things much worse is that just a fort­night ago, she promised to re­duce T&T’s high mur­der rate by June.

It was a pledge made when Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher was fac­ing in­tense grilling from the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and even then, it seemed like a lofty goal giv­en a TTPS crime de­tec­tion rate be­low 13 per cent and a mur­der rate that con­tin­ues to climb steadi­ly.

How­ev­er, the CoP now seems to be backpedalling on that promise just when she should be in­spir­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence. Even more alarm­ing was her state­ment that the coun­try is deal­ing with an un­nat­ur­al evil and that with­out di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, her an­ti-crime strate­gies are doomed to fail.

Just when she should be build­ing pub­lic trust in the TTPS, the CoP’s in­con­sis­tent mes­sag­ing is do­ing the op­po­site.

If, as seems to be the case, the CoP has been mak­ing off-the-cuff com­ments, she will al­ways be at risk of cre­at­ing the wrong im­pres­sion.

It is un­for­tu­nate that so ear­ly in her tenure, Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher is fail­ing to ef­fec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate—a skill that is crit­i­cal if she is to in­spire pos­i­tive change. If that is the case, she needs to brush up on her pub­lic speak­ing ur­gent­ly.

An in­abil­i­ty—or un­will­ing­ness—to clear­ly and con­sis­tent­ly com­mu­ni­cate could be a se­ri­ous im­ped­i­ment as she tries to trans­form the TTPS in­to an ag­ile and ef­fec­tive crime-fight­ing en­ti­ty.

While it was com­mend­able the CoP took the time to meet with the CCIC, she should have been bet­ter pre­pared.

Now that she sits at the helm of the TTPS—a dif­fi­cult as­sign­ment made more chal­leng­ing as T&T grap­ples with the high­est num­ber of mur­ders in its his­to­ry—the CoP must take the time to talk to the pub­lic and make every ef­fort to be present, vis­i­ble, avail­able, open and trans­par­ent in ad­dress­ing con­cerns about crime as they arise.

Hav­ing raised ex­pec­ta­tions by set­ting dead­lines for re­duc­ing the mur­der rate, how­ev­er, the CoP seems to al­ready be pro­ject­ing a lack of con­fi­dence in her own abil­i­ty to achieve that ob­jec­tive. She will now have to em­bark on dam­age con­trol, hope­ful­ly with sup­port from the TTPS com­mu­ni­ca­tions team and in the fu­ture, she must avoid re­peats of those blun­ders.