Re­tired se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, John­ny Abra­ham, has de­scribed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice as in­ef­fec­tive at crime fight­ing and be­ing un­able to lead those un­der them.

Abra­ham gained pop­u­lar­i­ty as an out­spo­ken crime fight­er and served as head of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and even­tu­al­ly in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion be­fore re­tir­ing in 2015.

Speak­ing dur­ing the open floor seg­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ An­ti-Crime Town Hall meet­ing at the La Joya Com­plex, St Joseph, on Mon­day night, Abra­ham ac­cused the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of po­lice lead­ers of fail­ing to in­spire sub­or­di­nates to con­front crim­i­nals.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that some se­nior of­fi­cers at­tained their ranks through aca­d­e­m­ic prowess and favouritism rather than crime-fight­ing abil­i­ty.

“I would go on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion and I would warn crim­i­nals to stay out of cen­tral and if they do come and live to tell the sto­ry, then that’s an­oth­er sto­ry,” Abra­ham told the au­di­ence.

“And there is no lead­er­ship in the po­lice ser­vice. And the rea­son for that is be­cause some peo­ple went and got el­e­vat­ed be­cause of friend­ship, be­cause of clique.

“While I was on the ground fight­ing crime, they were study­ing. The thing about the whole po­lice ser­vice now is peo­ple are afraid to take the chal­lenge to the crim­i­nals. They have no lead­ers, they have no lead­er­ship.”

Re­call­ing his ex­pe­ri­ences in ral­ly­ing a po­lice re­sponse to an up­surge in gang killings in Ch­agua­nas in 2015, Abra­ham said he was ca­pa­ble of se­cur­ing the en­tire Cen­tral Di­vi­sion us­ing on­ly five strate­gi­cal­ly placed po­lice ve­hi­cles.

He al­so not­ed that the in­volve­ment of di­vi­sion­al lead­ers in the an­ti-crime ac­tiv­i­ties was cru­cial in achiev­ing op­er­a­tional ob­jec­tives.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, re­tired ASP Sheri­don Hill said while he ap­pre­ci­at­ed Abra­ham’s frank­ness and de­sire to see the po­lice ser­vice im­prove, he did not agree with the way he raised the con­cerns.

Hill, who was as­signed to the Spe­cial Branch, Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID) and the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit dur­ing his 35-year ca­reer, said while con­struc­tive crit­i­cism was ap­pre­ci­at­ed, it should be aired us­ing prop­er meth­ods.

“I’m sure he’s (Abra­ham) pas­sion­ate about his com­mit­ment and al­le­giance to the po­lice ser­vice but I don’t think the way to con­tribute to the so­lu­tions to to­day’s prob­lems should be done in that man­ner,” Hill said.

“I am sure there are sev­er­al av­enues where Mr Abra­ham and oth­er re­tired of­fi­cers can pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions, sug­ges­tions, com­ments that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the ex­ec­u­tive and the hi­er­ar­chy of the ser­vice can con­sid­er for the im­prove­ment of or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Hill said he him­self has writ­ten to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and se­nior of­fi­cers.

Re­fer­ring to Abra­ham’s re­marks, where he ques­tioned the com­pe­tence of some of­fi­cers in fight­ing crime, Hill said such com­ments could be dam­ag­ing to the morale of po­lice of­fi­cers.

“It con­tributes to the neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of the po­lice ser­vice and it doesn’t help the ser­vice or help the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. I don’t sub­scribe to that ap­proach.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Hare­wood-Christo­pher for a re­sponse to Abra­ham’s re­marks yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful, as she did not an­swer calls to her cell­phone. The TTPS Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit al­so did not re­ply to queries.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed in­ter­im head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) ASP Ish­mael Pitt but he de­clined to com­ment.