Gail Alexan­der

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s re­cent state­ments on the need for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion in T&T’s an­ti-crime fight makes it ap­pear that she’s “thrown in the tow­el” al­ready and it doesn’t in­spire con­fi­dence that she’ll make the nec­es­sary changes, says UNC ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Sean Sobers.

“This coun­try is a pray­ing coun­try—yes, we know that. But God helps those who help them­selves,” Sobers said at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain, not­ing that di­vine in­ter­ven­tion alone is woe­ful­ly in­suf­fi­cient to erad­i­cate the crime scourge.

Al­so slam­ming the CoP’s state­ments was UNC Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, who said, “If the CoP’s se­ri­ous­ly telling the na­tion that her ma­jor an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive is to es­sen­tial­ly ‘pray mur­ders and rob­beries away’, then she’s un­fit to man­age the TTPS.”

Sobers and Ram­bal­ly were com­ment­ing on Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s state­ments at Wednes­day’s Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try break­fast func­tion, where she said T&T is a coun­try deal­ing with an “un­nat­ur­al evil and with­out di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, her an­ti-crime strate­gies, in­clud­ing re­duc­ing mur­ders, will be doomed to fail.” She al­so ad­mit­ted that sup­press­ing the mur­der rate is still “a bit be­yond” the TTPS’ ca­pa­bil­i­ties and as such, she “called for back­up” from “above.”

Sobers said the CoP was new to the job and very ear­ly on had in­di­cat­ed that her plan was to re­duce crime and mur­ders by June, “...Which by many stan­dards most per­sons thought was quite un­re­al­is­tic.”

“How­ev­er, be­cause she was new in the po­si­tion, peo­ple wished her well. But from that com­ment she made on Wednes­day—plas­tered all over the me­dia—to my mind, it ap­pears you’ve thrown in the tow­el,” Sobers said.

“We need some­body with a plan head­ing the TTPS, with the prop­er re­sources from the Gov­ern­ment to tru­ly tack­le crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in T&T and this hope that di­vine in­ter­ven­tion on­ly will save us from the very re­al crim­i­nals and gang­sters that we have plagu­ing T&T is woe­ful­ly in­suf­fi­cient and it can’t be the so­lu­tion on­ly.”

Sobers said T&T has so many church­es, tem­ples and mosques where the is­sue of crime is dis­cussed in T&T, which has bad eco­nom­ic is­sues and job loss­es.

“We pray for it dai­ly—that things turn around. I pray for it on a dai­ly ba­sis. But at some point in time, you need peo­ple to put their shoul­der to the wheel and ac­tu­al­ly get the job done—peo­ple to de­vel­op pol­i­cy and im­ple­ment it ac­cord­ing­ly and peo­ple to have the will to ac­tu­al­ly make a change.”

He added, “What was of­fered yes­ter­day by the CoP does not give me any con­fi­dence this par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual is ca­pa­ble of do­ing it and clear­ly, the Gov­ern­ment isn’t mind­ed to re­source the TTPS. We’ve been call­ing for them to do so since they en­tered of­fice.

“And what we’d have heard (on Wednes­day) is an ad­mis­sion that the per­son who is ac­tu­al­ly in need of di­vine in­ter­ven­tion and help ... may very well be the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.”

Ram­bal­ly mean­while said the CoP’s re­marks were an in­sult to all cit­i­zens and vic­tims of crime.

“Is the Com­mis­sion­er say­ing that the record num­ber of mur­ders for 2022 was as a re­sult of a lack of prayer? Just this morn­ing a fam­i­ly in my con­stituen­cy were the vic­tims of a hor­rif­ic home in­va­sion. An­oth­er con­stituent is cur­rent­ly in the hos­pi­tal hav­ing been crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed when the ban­dits crashed in­to her. Is the Com­mis­sion­er say­ing that these vic­tims were not pray­ing enough?”

Say­ing he was look­ing for­ward to hear­ing CoP’s plans when he heard she was sched­uled to speak at the fo­rum, Ram­bal­ly said, “It’s there­fore dis­ap­point­ing that in­stead of pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with plans, the Com­mis­sion­er chose in­stead to de­liv­er a ser­mon where she stat­ed the TTPS is re­ly­ing on di­vine in­ter­ven­tion to as­sist them in deal­ing with crime.

“... Cit­i­zens don’t need a ser­mon on the im­por­tance of prayer from the Com­mis­sion­er, what they need is mod­ern, da­ta-dri­ven an­ti-crime plans, cou­pled with pub­lic of­fi­cials who do not de­flect their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on to oth­ers, in­clud­ing the Almighty.”