Shane Su­perville

and An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porters

With the mur­der count ex­pect­ed to cross 300 this week­end—al­most halfway to the record 605 record­ed last year—Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is com­ing un­der in­creased scruti­ny. How­ev­er, af­ter sev­en months in the post, there are still no met­rics or da­ta avail­able to mea­sure how ef­fec­tive her tenure has been and if her crime fight­ing strate­gies are yield­ing fruit.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher con­tin­ues to main­tain a sto­ic si­lence in the face of ques­tions from the me­dia and the pub­lic.

Ac­cord­ing to head of the Crim­i­nol­o­gy De­part­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Dr Randy Seep­er­sad: “There are things that the CoP and the po­lice ser­vice as a whole, can share with the pub­lic with­out harm­ing their strate­gies and com­pro­mis­ing their strengths.”

Re­fer­ring to the volatile re­la­tion­ship be­tween the po­lice and the pub­lic, he said, “Re­search shows the con­fi­dence in the po­lice in T&T isn’t as good as it re­al­ly should be, and we do need a good lev­el of con­fi­dence for per­sons to come for­ward and in­ter­act with the po­lice and pro­vide in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence to help in clear­ance rates.”

Seep­er­sad was not sure what new crime fight­ing mea­sures the CoP had in­tro­duced, or the sta­tis­tics to show what had been achieved thus far.

“I don’t see the harm in a CoP en­gag­ing the pub­lic and stake­hold­ers. I see that as a pos­i­tive thing be­cause it helps to put a face to the name, it helps to build bridges, it helps to build con­fi­dence, it builds re­la­tion­ship,” he said.

He en­cour­aged Hare­wood-Christo­pher, “to get in­ter­ac­tive with the pub­lic and share in­for­ma­tion.” In the face of her ap­par­ent re­luc­tance to do so, he sug­gest­ed hav­ing “a des­ig­nat­ed branch of the po­lice ser­vice or a des­ig­nat­ed per­son who is re­al­ly a spokesper­son for the po­lice ser­vice and who is au­tho­rised to share cer­tain types of in­for­ma­tion with the me­dia and the pub­lic.”

Re­fer­ring to Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s promise be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) in Feb­ru­ary to re­duce mur­ders by June—which she lat­er had to ad­mit was not achiev­able—for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Chair­man (PolSC) Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran said: “She has made a promise that in the cir­cum­stances, it would like­ly be im­pos­si­ble to achieve and who­ev­er ad­vised her to make that promise, is far be­hind the re­al­i­ties be­cause the mur­ders them­selves are quite fright­en­ing.

“Peo­ple be­have like they don’t re­spect the law. It looks like they don’t re­spect the courts now so what we have is a cri­sis of re­spect for au­thor­i­ty and she had found her­self, maybe at a very bad time, mak­ing promis­es about re­duc­ing not on­ly the mur­der rate, but pub­lic safe­ty gen­er­al­ly.”

De­osaran rec­om­mend­ed that Hare­wood-Christo­pher de­vel­op a new strat­e­gy to get the pub­lic to share in­for­ma­tion and work with of­fi­cers in­stead of against them.

With­out this sup­port, he warned that “giv­en our po­lice ser­vice as it was and it is, it will be im­pos­si­ble for them to reach the pre­sumed tar­gets they have been set­ting, so she needs to have a new strat­e­gy of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

He said Hare­wood-Christo­pher could not tack­le crime fight­ing on her own and re­quired the help of “mid­dle men” such as the cor­po­rals and sergeants who are key front lin­ers.

“She has to get in­to the bel­ly of the po­lice ser­vice, apart from talk­ing to the pub­lic from the top... she has to get down in­side in the in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tion and get them to work with her.”

The CoP is a mem­ber of the Po­lice Au­dit Com­mit­tee which De­osaran chaired when he sat as head of the PolSC. He said she should “look at that doc­u­ment now and im­ple­ment what she her­self has rec­om­mend­ed.”

De­osaran added, “Once she does some of these things, she will up­lift her rep­u­ta­tion and per­form the du­ties a CoP are sup­posed to per­form.”

Pressed to say how ques­tions about the CoP’s per­for­mance could be ad­dressed if the of­fice hold­er re­mained silent on the is­sue, De­osaran placed the is­sue of ac­count­abil­i­ty on the shoul­ders of the PolSC.

“The PolSC should is­sue a progress re­port now, that is part of their du­ty. They have a con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty to as­sess, eval­u­ate, and re­port on the work of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and the three deputies, so the PolSC can’t wait for the end of the year or the end of three years...es­pe­cial­ly since the ap­point­ment is now be­ing re­newed by the Cab­i­net, so the Com­mis­sion has to get on top of things and val­i­date their con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty by giv­ing a re­port now, at least for this first half of the year, for pub­lic con­sump­tion and to al­so let the po­lice them­selves know how the Com­mis­sion feels about the lead­er­ship.”

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said, “The per­for­mance of the of­fice hold­er ought not to be con­fined to the num­ber of mur­der.”

The of­fi­cer said this was just one of the vari­ables on which the CoP’s suc­cess should be de­ter­mined. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that this year’s mur­der fig­ure was more than the cor­re­spond­ing year’s, he said a broad­er look at oth­er cat­e­gories of crime is nec­es­sary.

He said on as­sum­ing of­fice Hare­wood-Christo­pher im­ple­ment­ed a vi­o­lence re­duc­tion pol­i­cy in­clu­sive of homi­cides but it needs to be in­ten­si­fied be­cause “we are on the right tra­jec­to­ry to re­duc­tion.”

Asked to weigh in on the CoP’s per­for­mance thus far, the se­nior of­fi­cer said: “The in­cum­bent has the pre-req­ui­sites to per­form the job ef­fec­tive­ly. “The pre-req­ui­sites would be acad­e­mia, ex­pe­ri­ence, net­work­ing abil­i­ty, a mo­ti­va­tor and com­pe­ten­cy ev­i­denced by the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of the cur­rent of­fi­cers.”

In terms of a re­duc­tion in shoot­ings and wound­ings, rob­beries and oth­er of­fences, he claimed, “We are on the way by pay­ing more at­ten­tion to it and us­ing the in­tel­li­gence-led ap­proach by util­is­ing the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) Branch to work with the em­pir­i­cal da­ta to de­vel­op strate­gies to re­duce those acts of vi­o­lence.”

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (PSS­WA), ASP Gideon Dick­son ac­knowl­edged that lead­er­ship im­pacts per­for­mance.

“I think that in all fair­ness to her, the op­por­tu­ni­ty lies there­in to con­tin­ue to call on oth­er par­al­lel law en­force­ment bod­ies to play their part in terms of all of us work­ing to­geth­er to­wards try­ing to get a safer and more se­cure T&T.”

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted, “I think there is some room for im­prove­ment in terms of how we col­lab­o­rate more with our stake­hold­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, the De­fence Force, and the Im­mi­gra­tion Unit.

“These are all en­ti­ties that need to work hand in hand with the po­lice, in­clu­sive of our mu­nic­i­pal (po­lice) col­leagues and once that is done, we can in fact see a stymie to the car­nage we are see­ing tak­ing place in­clud­ing the loss of life.”

Dick­son said: “The po­lice ser­vice is not an ide­al or­gan­i­sa­tion but we make the most of the sit­u­a­tion that is be­fore us, and yes, there is room for im­prove­ment.

“From an As­so­ci­a­tion per­spec­tive, we will con­tin­ue to look at the wel­fare of the of­fi­cers. Once their wel­fare is tak­en care of, we know there won’t be any hes­i­ta­tion to go out and per­form their du­ties.” The PSS­WA is sched­uled to meet with the CoP next week to dis­cuss is­sues iden­ti­fied over the last month.

Re­tired Snr Supt John­ny Abra­ham, who led the Cen­tral and Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sions re­spec­tive­ly, did not know if in­tel­li­gence dri­ven polic­ing strate­gies in­tro­duced dur­ing his tenure had been dis­man­tled.

Claim­ing Ca­roni had now be­come some­thing of a hotspot like En­ter­prise, Laven­tille, Beetham and Sea Lots, he re­vealed, “I used to have a ve­hi­cle parked up at St He­le­na Junc­tion by KFC...24 hours. We nev­er had any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in Ca­roni.

“We used to lock down the whole of North­ern Di­vi­sion by putting one po­lice ve­hi­cle there, one by where they had the new air­port link road and one by where they have the cre­ma­tion site area and the whole of North­ern Di­vi­sion was locked off.”

Abra­ham, who was known to be un­ortho­dox in his polic­ing re­called: “The whole of North­ern and East­ern Di­vi­sion can­not come in Cen­tral to com­mit crimes and get out.”

In cas­es where there is a shoot­ing and the get­away ve­hi­cle can­not be found, he asked, “Where is the ve­hi­cle dis­ap­pear­ing to? In­to thin air? When I was work­ing we had the he­li­copter avail­able.

“I used to get them to land in Ca­roni at the back of the sta­tion and pick up the dog and han­dlers and meet me in any part of Trinidad where there was a crime and they were will­ing to do it be­cause we achieved suc­cess.”

Abra­ham was crit­i­cal of the cur­rent op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures and felt the po­lice should play a greater role in crime de­tec­tion and sup­pres­sion.

He said while Hare­wood-Christo­pher might be telling of­fi­cers in charge of the di­vi­sions what to do, the ques­tion is whether they are car­ry­ing out those in­struc­tions and “whether they have peo­ple in these di­vi­sions with the bel­ly, the met­tle and the know-how, fight­ing on the streets.”

Abra­ham said the brand of polic­ing need­ed to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence can on­ly be ex­e­cut­ed in the field, not from the com­fort of po­lice sta­tions.

Com­ment­ing on re­ports that po­lice had brought in $9 mil­lion in rev­enue through the is­su­ing of fixed penal­ty tick­ets, Abra­ham asked, “Where is the pa­trol in the res­i­den­tial and non-res­i­den­tial ar­eas so the peo­ple can say yes, we sat­is­fied with the po­lice. Road blocks is not about polic­ing alone, so it’s a lot of things they need to im­prove on.

“You can’t have your glass wind up and you dri­ving all about like you’re in lux­u­ry and you’re not tak­ing on peo­ple You have to be on the ground with the peo­ple. My ad­vice is the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dant and them in the di­vi­sion and the low­er ranks have to get up and make this thing work. The Com­mis­sion­er can­not make this thing work, she can on­ly give di­rec­tives.”