The Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion’s clear­ance last week­end of Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher of any wrong­do­ing has come at a cru­cial junc­ture, per­mit­ting her to re­tire from her pro­longed tenure as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on Thurs­day, free of any le­gal is­sues.

How­ev­er, the de­lay by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) in of­fi­cial­ly re­in­stat­ing her, since in­form­ing the court on Mon­day of the lift­ing of her sus­pen­sion, rais­es con­cerns about its op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

Fol­low­ing the ex­on­er­a­tion of Hare­wood-Christo­pher, the Com­mis­sion was ob­lig­at­ed to send her a let­ter of re­in­state­ment, as well as to no­ti­fy act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin of the re­vo­ca­tion of his act­ing ap­point­ment, thus restor­ing him to his sub­stan­tive job of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) and al­so re­scind­ing the ap­point­ment of ACP Curt Si­mon, who had been act­ing as DCP in Ben­jamin's stead.

To date, the Com­mis­sion's slow re­sponse has not been ac­com­pa­nied with any pub­lic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by its se­nior lead­er­ship of what should typ­i­cal­ly be a rou­tine mat­ter of re­leas­ing a piece of cor­re­spon­dence to back up a ver­bal un­der­tak­ing, giv­en, of all places, in the court.

But alas! The pub­licly hu­mil­i­at­ed Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher will not be af­ford­ed any grace – not even by the in­de­pen­dent Com­mis­sion that was set up to in­su­late per­sons like her from po­lit­i­cal and oth­er forms of in­ter­fer­ence.

With all she has been sub­ject­ed to over the past three-plus months that crim­i­nal charges been dan­gling over her head as in­ves­ti­ga­tions per­sist­ed in­to the is­suance of two sniper weapons to the non-mil­i­tary Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), Hare­wood-Christo­pher de­serves any­thing but to have her last days in of­fice shroud­ed in any more un­cer­tain­ty or con­tro­ver­sy.

But this is ex­act­ly what she is now be­ing af­ford­ed even as am­bi­gu­i­ty al­so sur­rounds the ap­point­ment of a new Com­mis­sion­er to re­place her when her for­mal term con­cludes to­mor­row.

Af­ter be­ing grant­ed a one-year ex­ten­sion to serve by the for­mer Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion, Hare­wood-Christo­pher is not legal­ly per­mit­ted to con­tin­ue be­yond this point.

This means that the Com­mis­sion, through the Par­lia­ment, should have been prepar­ing to ap­point a new Com­mis­sion­er by Thurs­day or, at the very least, des­ig­nate some­one to serve in an act­ing ca­pac­i­ty un­til a new com­mis­sion­er is con­firmed by Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, with Par­lia­ment yet to re­con­vene fol­low­ing the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion that swept a new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment in­to of­fice, the process of ap­point­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s re­place­ment is al­so in lim­bo.

This sce­nario is un­sus­tain­able for Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly as curb­ing wor­ri­some crime con­tin­ues to be na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty Num­ber 1.

It is cru­cial, there­fore, that the new Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led gov­ern­ment pri­ori­tis­es this mat­ter with Par­lia­ment ex­pect­ed to re­con­vene lat­er this month.

Now is al­so a good a time for us as a coun­try to re­con­sid­er the method used to ap­point po­lice com­mis­sion­ers and their deputies.

One of the rec­om­men­da­tions cur­rent­ly be­ing ad­vanced is for Par­lia­ment to be tak­en out of the process al­to­geth­er, and for the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to be grant­ed full and fi­nal pow­er to make such ap­point­ments.

How­ev­er, we would want to be giv­en cer­tain as­sur­ances by the Com­mis­sion be­fore this could hap­pen.

Apart from en­sur­ing a seam­less tran­si­tion from one of­fice hold­er to an­oth­er, we al­so want an as­sur­ance from the top of the Com­mis­sion that nev­er again should any hold­ers of the job of top cop in this coun­try be dragged through the mud with­out pro­tec­tion of their dig­ni­ty and ho­n­our, in the ab­sence of con­crete ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing.