Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams is sharply crit­i­cis­ing the man­ner in which top cop Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher was ar­rest­ed and re­leased last week, warn­ing that the han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion could have un­der­mined the coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was de­tained on Thurs­day in con­nec­tion with the im­por­ta­tion of two sniper ri­fles for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) in 2023. She was re­leased on Sat­ur­day with­out charge.

Williams, who led the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) from 2012 to 2018, yes­ter­day said the en­tire op­er­a­tion vi­o­lat­ed best prac­tices, giv­en the high of­fice held by Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“What hap­pened here, it’s re­al­ly un­pro­fes­sion­al. It’s un­pro­fes­sion­al, it’s un­prece­dent­ed, it’s ug­ly. This was done messy,” he said in a tele­phone in­ter­view, de­scrib­ing the se­ries of events as un­planned, per­haps due to in­ex­pe­ri­ence or a lack of guid­ance.

He said while no­body is above the law, cer­tain priv­i­leges should have been af­ford­ed to the CoP.

“When you’re do­ing things, you don’t just act. You think about the con­se­quences of your ac­tions be­fore you act. A move­ment like what oc­curred there, that could desta­bilise the or­gan­i­sa­tion. It could desta­bilise a coun­try. Be­cause we’re not talk­ing about a cor­po­ral or a con­sta­ble or a sergeant at the low­er lev­el, we’re talk­ing about the head of an or­gan­i­sa­tion. That could trig­ger so many flow­ing events that Trinidad and To­ba­go, in a State of Emer­gency, things could have turned out re­al messy ac­cord­ing to who is the leader,” he said.

He added that Hare­wood-Christo­pher should have on­ly been de­tained if there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to charge her, and a ju­nior of­fi­cer should nev­er have been the one to in­ter­ro­gate her.

“If you have to deal with a per­son like a com­mis­sion­er, deputy com­mis­sion­er, as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, you would not de­tain that per­son for days. The point at which you will ar­rest that per­son is the point where you have sat­is­fied your­self you have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence, com­pelling ev­i­dence, to pros­e­cute that per­son for an of­fence,” he ex­plained.

For­mer top cop Dwayne Gibbs, the Cana­di­an na­tion­al who served as CoP from 2010 to 2012, de­clined to spec­u­late on the pro­ce­dures or mo­tives used in Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ar­rest. How­ev­er, he not­ed that any le­gal firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, or ex­plo­sives al­lowed in­to T&T must be ap­proved and signed off by the CoP.

“The weapons in ques­tion there­fore, if brought in­to T&T ‘legal­ly’, would have had to have come to the at­ten­tion of the CoP and been ap­proved by her, to be legal­ly in the coun­try. I’m sure she would be con­stant­ly sign­ing off on weapons and am­mu­ni­tion for all ac­tive pro­tec­tive agen­cies in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

He added: “The rea­sons for any ac­qui­si­tions would be pre­sent­ed to her and it would be rou­tine for her to sign, thus al­low­ing them in­to the coun­try. Any oth­er weapons, ex­plo­sives, etc. found in T&T would be con­sid­ered il­le­gal, if they had not been ap­proved by the com­mis­sion­er.”

Hinds de­fends Govt’s re­sponse

In re­sponse to crit­ics who have raised con­cerns over the si­lence from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Min­is­ter iwith re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the TTPS, Kei­th Scot­land, Hinds yes­ter­day de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s stance, say­ing Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had al­ready clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed its po­si­tion.

He em­pha­sised that his min­istry’s po­si­tion aligns with what Row­ley had said dur­ing the open­ing of the fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Grand Chemin, Moru­ga, on Fri­day.

“He (Row­ley), speak­ing au­thor­i­ta­tive­ly and truth­ful­ly and wise­ly as prime min­is­ter, spoke so com­pre­hen­sive­ly, I con­sid­er it suf­fi­cient­ly re­flec­tive of his Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion. And his po­si­tion is these mat­ters are mat­ters for the po­lice, the DPP and any ques­tions in re­la­tion to de­tails around them should be di­rect­ed to those two,” Hinds said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

“He in­di­cat­ed quite ap­po­site­ly that the Gov­ern­ment, mean­ing the ex­ec­u­tives, mean­ing min­is­ters of Gov­ern­ment, plays no role in the mat­ters that you all raised with him and in which you are now rais­ing with me. So, I con­sid­er that the prime min­is­ter’s com­ments are quite ad­e­quate, and I take it his oth­er min­is­ters will be guid­ed by that for the time be­ing,” he con­tin­ued.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Win­ford James crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse, sug­gest­ing they were ne­glect­ing their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the na­tion.

James ar­gued that Row­ley’s re­sponse seemed like an at­tempt to ab­solve him­self of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. As the head of Gov­ern­ment, he said Row­ley must re­main in­formed and en­gaged, or risk fur­ther erod­ing pub­lic trust.

“Row­ley seems to be sug­gest­ing that he’s wip­ing his hands of that state of af­fairs, what has hap­pened, but he can’t. As the chief ex­ec­u­tive of our coun­try, he has to keep be­ing in­formed of what’s go­ing on and peo­ple are go­ing to ask the ques­tion, whether ig­no­rant­ly or wise­ly, ‘what is the gov­ern­ment do­ing?’

“And the op­po­si­tion is go­ing to ex­ploit the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the gov­ern­ment in this mat­ter, ex­cept we are the worst laugh­ing stocks that you can find any­where in the world,” he said.

He added, “There’s a whole im­broglio go­ing on here and the Gov­ern­ment can­not af­ford to be qui­et on this mat­ter. We have a gov­ern­ment, you know, we have an ex­ec­u­tive, we have a cab­i­net. Some­body has to speak de­fin­i­tive­ly on this mat­ter in a way that makes sense.”

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath agreed that the sit­u­a­tion was high­ly prob­lem­at­ic and sug­gest­ed that Gov­ern­ment has ques­tions to an­swer. He al­so raised con­cerns about why the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) de­cid­ed to re­move Hare­wood-Christo­pher giv­en that she was not charged.

“Those are the messy parts of the equa­tion that we are to deal with and the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to have to an­swer. Now, of course, the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to try to wash their hands and say, ‘is not we is the po­lice ser­vice com­mis­sion’. But we all know for a fact that the prime min­is­ter and his deal­ings with a for­mer po­lice ser­vice com­mis­sion and what tran­spired out of it. Is any­body go­ing to be­lieve that the prime min­is­ter doesn’t have or isn’t ex­ert­ing in­flu­ence on the po­lice ser­vice com­mis­sion?”