“What is the truth?”

The ques­tion comes from Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day on the “im­broglio” sur­round­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

Af­ter spend­ing two days in po­lice cus­tody be­ing ques­tioned in con­nec­tion with the pur­chase and im­por­ta­tion of two high-pow­ered sniper ri­fles, the Com­mis­sion­er walked out of the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion with no charges be­ing laid against her on Sat­ur­day.

Ab­du­lah said there was no clar­i­ty on this mat­ter with two nar­ra­tives be­ing ped­dled, one by the TTPS High Com­mand that she was fac­ing charges and the oth­er by the Com­mis­sion­er’s at­tor­ney Pamela El­der, SC that the po­lice did not have one drop of ev­i­dence against the Com­mis­sion­er.

“The im­broglio sur­round­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, that clear­ly there is a lot more in the mor­tar than the pes­tle and the coun­try needs to know the truth as to what else is in the mor­tar.”

He said the in­for­ma­tion giv­en to the pub­lic, thus far, was un­clear and con­vo­lut­ed.

He said the sit­u­a­tion has dam­aged not on­ly the Com­mis­sion­er’s rep­u­ta­tion but al­so the TTPS’ and wouldn’t be eas­i­ly re­stored.

Ab­du­lah ques­tioned whether or not the Com­mis­sion­er could re­sume and ef­fec­tive­ly car­ry out her du­ties.

“For the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to come out of de­ten­tion no longer un­der ar­rest but for her now to be able to re­sume her du­ties in a sit­u­a­tion where there is sig­nif­i­cant re­la­tion­ship dam­age be­tween her­self and if not more than one, at least one, very, very se­nior of­fi­cers of the TTPS is prob­lem­at­ic, to say the least.”

Based on claims made by Hare­wood-Chrsi­to­pher’s at­tor­ney, he said this rais­es ques­tions about the in­tegri­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, how it con­ducts in­ves­ti­ga­tions and on what ba­sis it ar­rests peo­ple.

“On what ba­sis per­sons are charged, whether this has some­thing to do with the very low rate of con­vic­tions of per­sons with re­spect to the num­ber of vi­o­lent crimes that are be­ing com­mit­ted?  Low de­tec­tion rate, low con­vic­tion rate.”

Re­it­er­at­ing the MSJ’s call for a sec­ond Re­pub­lic of T&T, he said the coun­try is fac­ing a cri­sis in lead­er­ship and crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the TTPS, where the morale of po­lice of­fi­cers would have been af­fect­ed by the ar­rest of their leader.

Ab­du­lah stressed that the ar­rest of a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er dur­ing the State of Emer­gency is not a good sit­u­a­tion for the coun­try.

“The MSJ is say­ing that the truth of the sit­u­a­tion sur­round­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the coun­try needs to know what that truth is. We do not know what the truth is. We are hear­ing dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tives and this is not a good thing for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He called on the Di­rec­tor for Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to al­so speak to the is­sue at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.

“Whether or not we now need to bring in ex­ter­nal per­sons to give us a re­al au­dit and re­port on what has tak­en place,” he said.