Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is ex­pect­ed to meet with in­ter­na­tion­al al­lies in the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States to dis­cuss the re­quire­ments need­ed to es­tab­lish a Cold Case Unit be­fore moves are made to set up one with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Grif­fith said he did not in­tend to set up a Cold Case Unit with­out first get­ting ex­pert ad­vice as to the im­me­di­ate needs for such a func­tion­al en­ti­ty which will in­clude DNA test­ing as part of strate­gies in re­solv­ing cas­es.

He said: “For the Cold Case Unit to op­er­ate ef­fec­tive­ly, just tak­ing oth­er of­fi­cers from the TTPS and re­as­sign­ing them to a Cold Case Unit serves very lit­tle pur­pose.”

He ex­plained, “We are al­ready aware that our de­tec­tion rate is not very high and these are for warm cas­es, so it means we have to have a vast im­prove­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, in train­ing, and the knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence used in oth­er coun­tries deal­ing with cold cas­es.”

Re­veal­ing he would be in the UK next week, Grif­fith said: “There have been im­prove­ments over the last few years in DNA test­ing, foren­sic test­ing and dif­fer­ent meth­ods that can as­sist in try­ing to find things.”

“With tech­no­log­i­cal im­prove­ments, there are cer­tain things you will have that you may not have been able to pick up be­fore but which we can now pick up and give us leads to help in crack­ing cas­es.”

Seek­ing to avoid the pit­falls that could be­fall the unit if it was not cor­rect­ly set up, Grif­fith is hope­ful the ex­pe­ri­ence and tech­nol­o­gy of in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts would prove to be suc­cess­ful in set­ting up the Cold Case Unit in T&T.

He said: “When that unit is set up, the of­fi­cers would have the tech­nol­o­gy and train­ing and ca­pa­bil­i­ties to en­sure the Cold Case Unit could be of val­ue.”

Grif­fith has vowed to have the unit ful­ly es­tab­lished by mid-2019.

He said, “I don’t want to give peo­ple un­re­al­is­tic hope, but this will af­ford them a cer­tain de­gree of com­fort that we have not closed the lid and ig­nored these mat­ters.”

Grif­fith said, “Every sin­gle case of a miss­ing per­son will still be very ac­tive.”

Fam­i­ly of miss­ing lec­tur­er

seeks clo­sure

Heart­ened by the news that a Cold Case Unit will be es­tab­lished, He­len Bergen­dahl said, “I think it is fan­tas­tic.”

Still griev­ing over the dis­ap­pear­ance of her moth­er—COSTAATT Lec­tur­er Glen­da Charles-Har­ris who went miss­ing on Ju­ly 27, 2015—Bergen­dahl said: “I think every­one who has gone through hav­ing a loved one miss­ing is hav­ing a hard a time griev­ing be­cause they don’t know what to grieve.”

She con­tin­ued, “It’s very hard to move on with your life be­cause you are kind of left in lim­bo you can’t get any an­swers, and you can’t even go to a fu­ner­al or give the per­son what they are worth…it is very tough when some­body dis­ap­pears.”

Charles-Har­ris was last seen at the Tru Valu Su­per­mar­ket, Di­a­mond Vale, Diego Mar­tin around 5.30 pm.

Her car was found aban­doned at In­di­an Walk, Princes Town one day lat­er.

At the time of her dis­ap­pear­ance, Charles-Har­ris was 78-years-old and held the post as Head, En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies De­part­ment, Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (COSTAATT).

Un­able to stom­ach the thought of re­turn­ing to T&T since her moth­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance, Bergen­dahl said none of her sib­lings had­been able to move on.

She re­vealed: “We go through the mo­tions of life be­cause we have to as we have fam­i­lies and there are peo­ple who are de­pen­dent on us not to break down.”

“The Caribbean way of life is to push on and do what you need to do to sur­vive…Trinida­di­ans are very tough peo­ple.”

Un­cer­tain of their next move at this time, Bergen­dahl said the fam­i­ly con­tin­ues to long for an­swers as to what hap­pened to their moth­er and she is hope­ful Grif­fith will be able to at least bring some clo­sure to them.

She said: “At the back of our minds, we know she is not com­ing back, but we con­tin­ue to hope and pray that mir­a­cles can hap­pen.”

Al­so ex­press­ing hope that some res­o­lu­tion would be brought to bear in this mat­ter was COSTAAT Pres­i­dent, Dr Gillian Paul who said the in­sti­tu­tion’s stu­dents and teach­ers con­tin­ued to grieve for Charles-Har­ris.

She wel­comed the an­nounce­ment by Grif­fith to set up a Cold Case Unit as she be­lieves it will help those whose rel­a­tives re­main miss­ing.

Paul said an act­ing ap­point­ment had been made in re­spect of fill­ing Charles-Har­ris’s post.

Mean­while, she said dis­cus­sions were still need­ed to de­ter­mine how Charles-Har­ris should be ho­n­oured and that pre­vi­ous sug­ges­tions to es­tab­lish a schol­ar­ship fund in her name was still the main rec­om­men­da­tion on the ta­ble.