The ex­ten­sion of Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s tenure as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, though un­pop­u­lar, has not come as any great sur­prise.

Even be­fore Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment of her one-year ex­ten­sion, it had be­come clear that the Gov­ern­ment would go this route.

To be­gin with, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion had been tardy in its search for a new com­mis­sion­er, and, on top of that, the nec­es­sary par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures to ap­point an act­ing com­mis­sion­er were not trig­gered be­fore yes­ter­day’s ex­pi­ra­tion of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract.

Yet many had hoped, and in­deed prayed, that the Gov­ern­ment would lis­ten to the cries of those de­mand­ing her re­place­ment based on poor per­for­mance.

Since tak­ing of­fice and promis­ing to make a se­ri­ous dent in mur­ders, Hare­wood-Christo­pher has presided over a pe­ri­od of de­te­ri­o­rat­ing na­tion­al safe­ty with in­creas­es in vi­o­lent crime and gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

Her fail­ure to ad­dress the pub­lic dur­ing some of the most daunt­ing episodes of crime and vi­o­lence has rapid­ly di­min­ished any be­lief in her abil­i­ty to turn things around.

Yet, the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to demon­strate tremen­dous faith in her lead­er­ship.

Those now call­ing on the pub­lic to sup­port her ex­ten­sion have care­ful­ly avoid­ed mak­ing state­ments on her ac­tu­al per­for­mance, sug­gest­ing in­stead that the coun­try fo­cus­es on the fail­ure of oth­er in­sti­tu­tions to pre­vent guns from en­ter­ing the coun­try.

Oth­ers have sug­gest­ed that we as cit­i­zens should fo­cus on how we can achieve a broad­er ap­proach to crime fight­ing, start­ing in schools and homes, de­flect­ing at­ten­tion away from Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s di­rect lead­er­ship.

How­ev­er, it has to be said that the prob­lems of porous bor­ders and the in­flux of weapons are noth­ing new, and nei­ther is the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing so­cial fab­ric, which has been the top­ic of much dis­cus­sion for decades and most cer­tain­ly re­quires the com­mit­ment of the en­tire cit­i­zen­ry to ar­rive at an ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion.

Still, there is no get­ting away from the ques­tion of whether we have the right lead­er­ship of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to bring about the nec­es­sary out­come—that is, to re­turn the coun­try to a lev­el of safe­ty, re­gain pub­lic con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice, and mo­ti­vate of­fi­cers to do bet­ter.

It is sim­ply not enough to call for pub­lic sup­port when Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s tenure to date sug­gests she is not ca­pa­ble of mak­ing a se­ri­ous im­pact on crime.

We note that Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the ex­ten­sion of her con­tract with­out of­fer­ing any con­crete rea­son for do­ing so, oth­er than the need for con­ti­nu­ity and sta­bil­i­ty in the po­lice ser­vice.

And, from some of the pub­lic re­spons­es so far, it is clear this ex­pla­na­tion does not suf­fice.

As the old say­ing goes, ‘per­for­mance beats ole talk any day’, and Hare­wood Christo­pher’s per­for­mance has sim­ply not been up to par.

As leader of the Gov­ern­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley must ul­ti­mate­ly seek to re­store faith in his Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing by of­fer­ing a log­i­cal ex­pla­na­tion for the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s tar­di­ness in find­ing a re­place­ment and for why Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract was ex­tend­ed.

Fail­ure to do so on­ly sug­gests that his ad­min­is­tra­tion is out of touch with the mood on the ground, or worse yet, is in­sen­si­tive to the pleas of those des­per­ate for a change in the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion.