When it comes to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, it seems that when it rains, it pours.

Just as it grap­ples with the un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing its most se­nior of­fi­cer, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, ar­rest­ed (but not charged) and then sus­pend­ed, a High Court judge scrapped the TTPS’ cur­rent pro­mo­tion process for po­lice in­spec­tors.

In his rul­ing fol­low­ing a law­suit brought by Po­lice In­spec­tor Mark Her­nan­dez, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad con­clud­ed that the TTPS, through the then po­lice com­mis­sion­er, en­gaged in what he termed a ‘fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed pro­mo­tion process’.

Judge Seep­er­sad went on to say that the breach­es were ‘nu­mer­ous, sub­stan­tial, seem­ing­ly de­lib­er­ate, per­va­sive, and pro­found’.

It couldn’t be more damn­ing than that.

It is pre­sumed that, un­less the TTPS pur­sues oth­er le­gal av­enues, it will need to go back to the board and quick­ly come up with a brand new pro­mo­tion process.

The prob­lem is that, even if it gets its pro­mo­tion process in or­der, the chal­lenges at the Po­lice Ser­vice run a lot deep­er than that and re­quire a lot more than just the odd fix­ing here and there.

In fact, it is dif­fi­cult to work out whether we have been in such a dire sit­u­a­tion with vi­o­lence and crime in the coun­try be­cause of the state of af­fairs at the TTPS or whether the fair­ly sham­bol­ic and un­sta­ble run­ning of our po­lice force for decades made life much eas­i­er for crim­i­nals.

Ei­ther way, we are the ones who end up pay­ing a heavy price for it. And this needs to change.

First, the TTPS will need to have its trou­bles at the top sort­ed out, and pret­ty soon, whilst en­sur­ing nat­ur­al jus­tice for Ms Hare­wood-Christo­pher, as she must be pre­sumed in­no­cent un­til charged and, if so, then tried ac­cord­ing to the laws of the land.

And here is the first chal­lenge.

Nat­ur­al jus­tice prin­ci­ples mean that, if sus­pend­ed em­ploy­ees are even­tu­al­ly cleared of the al­le­ga­tions against them, they are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to their posts.

But, be­ing re­al­is­tic, it would be ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to see how the now-sus­pend­ed po­lice com­mis­sion­er would re­turn to her role af­ter this messy af­fair, even if no charges are brought for­ward (and, giv­en how slow our dis­ci­pli­nary and jus­tice wheels tend to move, the whole mat­ter may re­main un­re­solved well past the end of her cur­rent con­tract ex­ten­sion).

That means that we may be stuck with an act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for quite a long time, ef­fec­tive­ly un­able to im­ple­ment more rad­i­cal re­forms.

And not for the first time.

A quick look at the list of for­mer com­mis­sion­ers shows that, since the late 1990s, they ei­ther don’t last long or have long stints in the role in an act­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the longest-serv­ing com­mis­sion­er since the ear­ly 2000s, Stephen Williams, did so as act­ing CoP, not as a sub­stan­tive one.

This needs fix­ing, as in­sta­bil­i­ty at the top on­ly breeds prob­lems through­out the chain, es­pe­cial­ly in an al­ready dys­func­tion­al po­lice force.

And, with that, we al­so need a root-and-branch re­view of how the TTPS is man­aged, staffed, and op­er­at­ed.

True, no polic­ing in the world is easy: they per­form an ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult role, have to make life-and-death de­ci­sions on a dai­ly ba­sis, are very ex­posed to cor­rup­tion and co­er­cion by the crim­i­nal world, and have of­fi­cers reg­u­lar­ly fac­ing the kind of pres­sures and see­ing the kind of things that, thank­ful­ly, very few of us will ever be ex­posed to.

But there are great ex­am­ples around the world of po­lice forces that can ef­fec­tive­ly op­er­ate with­in the law (al­ways a good start when you are the law en­forcer), re­cruit and man­age staff with com­pe­tence, and act fair­ly but ruth­less­ly against cor­rup­tion and mis­be­hav­iour in their teams.

And the most fun­da­men­tal rea­son why law and or­der or­gan­i­sa­tions like the TTPS must op­er­ate like that is sim­ple: ef­fec­tive polic­ing can on­ly hap­pen if the po­lice are trust­ed and ac­cept­ed by the pub­lic.

If you may, we must see of­fi­cers (and they must see them­selves) as peo­ple who were giv­en pow­er of at­tor­ney by the cit­i­zens to po­lice for and with us, not de­spite or against us.

And that is why an ethos of true pub­lic ser­vice and rec­ti­tude must form the ba­sis of the TTPS if it is to re­gain some or all of the trust it has al­ready lost due to end­less cas­es of mis­man­age­ment, al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, and reg­u­lar abuse of pow­er.

And this goes for the small as well as the big things.

Every time a po­lice of­fi­cer clear­ly abus­es their ve­hi­cles’ sirens and flash­ing lights to jump the traf­fic lights when it is clear they are not on an emer­gency call, or when you see po­lice of­fi­cers’ per­son­al cars il­le­gal­ly parked around po­lice sta­tions, these are, in them­selves, rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor abus­es, but, col­lec­tive­ly, they on­ly help re­in­force the im­age of a TTPS that is undis­ci­plined and poor­ly man­aged.

It is the same when of­fi­cers fail to turn up for sched­uled work dur­ing Car­ni­val (and we will see that hap­pen­ing again over the next few days) when we all know that many duck the day job to work on more lu­cra­tive pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for fetes and oth­er events.

And no doubt that most, if not all, will keep their full salary for the month as well, mak­ing it not on­ly an act of in­dis­ci­pline but a fraud­u­lent one to boot.

With­out deep­er re­forms at the TTPS, crime will re­main out of con­trol (with or with­out State of Emer­gency), in­dis­ci­pline and poor work ethics will re­main the norm, and judges like Mr Seep­er­sad will con­tin­ue to rule against a dys­func­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Just as with trust, hope is in low sup­ply when it comes to our po­lice and our gov­ern­ments’ will to deal with this mess, but, who knows, who­ev­er wins the elec­tions lat­er this year could at least take a few and de­ci­sive steps to change our TTPS for the bet­ter.