A rel­a­tive un­known un­til his nom­i­na­tion to be­come Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er thrust him in­to the spot­light last week, Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro must quick­ly ad­just to the in­tense glare of pub­lic at­ten­tion as he takes on one of the most dif­fi­cult jobs in this coun­try.

At age 49, he is younger than many of his pre­de­ces­sors. Most of his 29 years in law en­force­ment were spent in the Spe­cial Branch, the in­tel­li­gence and se­cu­ri­ty unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), where his nat­ur­al ap­ti­tude for in­ves­ti­ga­tion was put to good use.

In his han­dling of com­plex, high-pro­file in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Gue­var­ro demon­strat­ed re­silience un­der pres­sure and a ded­i­ca­tion to im­par­tial jus­tice that should hold him in good stead. His ap­point­ment is seen as a bold step to­ward re­ju­ve­nat­ing the be­lea­guered TTPS.

It prob­a­bly helps that out­side of law en­force­ment cir­cles, the new Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er has been very low pro­file. Un­like many who oc­cu­pied the of­fice be­fore him, his polic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties were con­duct­ed most­ly be­hind the scenes.

He takes up du­ties with large amounts of good­will, in­clud­ing unan­i­mous sup­port from both sides of Par­lia­ment, as well as high ex­pec­ta­tions that he will de­liv­er the crime-fight­ing re­sults many of his pre­de­ces­sors were un­able to ac­com­plish.

Gue­var­ro’s ap­point­ment comes at a time when the na­tion faces nu­mer­ous se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges. The high lev­el of vi­o­lent crime in­cludes a record-break­ing mur­der rate that makes T&T one of the most dan­ger­ous coun­tries in the re­gion.

The tough job ahead for the new top cop in­volves not on­ly re­duc­ing the coun­try’s high crime sta­tis­tics but de­liv­er­ing on that man­date while main­tain­ing re­spect for civ­il lib­er­ties and com­mu­ni­ty val­ues.

That in­cludes break­ing the stran­gle­hold of crim­i­nal gangs, the pre­dom­i­nant con­trib­u­tors to vi­o­lence and law­less­ness across the coun­try. Ex­tri­cat­ing gangs from the vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties where they ex­ert neg­a­tive in­flu­ence will re­quire co-or­di­na­tion be­tween law en­force­ment and the groups that can de­liv­er tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ty in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies.

Gun crimes are at an all-time high, ac­count­ing for the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders com­mit­ted in this coun­try. For Gue­var­ro, there can be no let­ting up on ef­forts to re­move il­le­gal guns from the streets, even as the pend­ing stand-your-ground laws will add a new twist with the po­ten­tial re­lax­ation of firearms reg­u­la­tions for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

As the in­com­ing com­mis­sion­er grap­ples with the chal­lenge of bal­anc­ing en­hanced cit­i­zens’ rights with pre­vent­ing firearm-en­abled crimes, he will need to ex­plore op­tions such as more rig­or­ous vet­ting pro­ce­dures and height­ened vig­i­lance to en­sure any pol­i­cy mod­i­fi­ca­tions do not in­ad­ver­tent­ly es­ca­late vi­o­lent crime.

How­ev­er, the new top cop’s most chal­leng­ing task will be restor­ing con­fi­dence in the TTPS. His abil­i­ty to re­build trust is cen­tral to mo­bil­is­ing com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and im­prov­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween law en­force­ment and cit­i­zens.

Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion is the fact that he in­her­it­ed a TTPS just emerg­ing from con­tro­ver­sies, in­clud­ing the re­cent dra­mat­ic end to the tenure of his pre­de­ces­sor, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

There­fore, an im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty for him is build­ing a uni­fied, dis­ci­plined team that will be in­stru­men­tal in im­ple­ment­ing re­forms to trans­form the TTPS in­to a more ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment unit.

If he is to achieve any suc­cess in over­com­ing the na­tion’s press­ing se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges, Gue­var­ro will have to be a trans­for­ma­tive leader who is will­ing to make tough de­ci­sions for a safer T&T.