Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The Feb­ru­ary 2025 ar­rest of then sit­ting po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as part of a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­mained in the pub­lic con­scious­ness. Ques­tions, spec­u­la­tion, and con­cerns over the po­lice ser­vice’s im­age came in­to sharp fo­cus as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ued.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was ap­point­ed as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2023, and was ar­rest­ed at her of­fice on Jan­u­ary 30, 2025, days away from the his­toric two-year an­niver­sary of her ap­point­ment as the first sub­stan­tive fe­male po­lice com­mis­sion­er in the TTPS.

She re­mained in cus­tody for two days at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion but was even­tu­al­ly re­leased on the af­ter­noon of Feb­ru­ary 1, with no charges be­ing laid.

The ar­rest of a serv­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er hap­pened on­ly once be­fore in the his­to­ry of the TTPS with the ar­rest of for­mer top cop Ran­dolph Bur­roughs in 1986.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on De­cem­ber 12, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said that life con­tin­ues af­ter her de­par­ture from the TTPS. She ac­cept­ed that while she knew her tenure as po­lice com­mis­sion­er would in­evitably come to an end some­day, she did not ex­pect her de­par­ture from the po­lice ser­vice to be so con­tro­ver­sial.

“I lived know­ing that I will one day re­turn to civil­ian life. What I didn’t an­tic­i­pate were the cir­cum­stances that pre­cip­i­tat­ed my ex­it. I am grate­ful, how­ev­er, that I al­ways be­lieved that I serve a God who is big­ger than any­thing I can imag­ine, who him­self en­dured much more ad­ver­si­ty than I ever will, but who is able to de­liv­er me to the ut­ter­most.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so said she con­tin­ued to trust in God to grant her jus­tice against peo­ple who she said “con­spired” against her.

“It is in that God that I find my com­fort, and on whom I re­ly for jus­tice against those who con­spired to dam­age my rep­u­ta­tion and bring a pre­ma­ture end to my ca­reer. God nev­er fails.”

The TTPS lead­er­ship, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Jan­u­ary 31, for­mal­ly con­firmed Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ar­rest, as then DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin ac­knowl­edged that “it was not a nice feel­ing” to be con­duct­ing an en­quiry in­to a se­nior of­fi­cer.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment ear­li­er this month, pres­i­dent of the TTPS So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion ASP Ish­mael Pitt said while the ar­rest and en­quiry “could have been man­aged bet­ter”, such in­ci­dents in­volv­ing serv­ing se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers would al­ways stir con­cern and un­ease.

“We have been polic­ing our­selves to the ex­tent that it doesn’t mat­ter what rank one may as­sume in the or­gan­i­sa­tion; if in­ves­ti­ga­tions are to be done, in­ves­ti­ga­tions are done.

“But from an as­so­ci­a­tion per­spec­tive, we will al­ways cham­pi­on that these in­ves­ti­ga­tions are done in a par­tic­u­lar way so as to not de­mean or bring in­to dis­re­pute the char­ac­ters of our of­fi­cers.”

Pitt not­ed that sit­u­a­tions where a serv­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er was ar­rest­ed were par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing, as while it could show pro­fes­sion­al­ism on the part of the po­lice, it can al­so raise con­cerns over in­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges.

“It could im­pact the or­gan­i­sa­tion neg­a­tive­ly; on the oth­er hand, it could im­pact the or­gan­i­sa­tion in a way where it of­fers trans­paren­cy to show that we have no is­sue treat­ing with our own.

“Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, it’s al­ways a ‘damn if you do, damn if you don’t’, be­cause we can treat with is­sues that would tend to bring a pub­lic per­cep­tion that we are not be­yond re­proach, and on the oth­er hand, just the treat­ing of these is­sues in them­selves high­lights to the pub­lic that we do have is­sues as an or­gan­i­sa­tion and I dare­say any in­sti­tu­tion that has hu­man be­ings will al­ways have is­sues.”

Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing her re­lease from the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion on the af­ter­noon of Feb­ru­ary 1, 2025, Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s at­tor­ney, Pamela El­der, SC, de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “out­ra­geous”, not­ing that she and her ju­nior at­tor­ney Rus­sell Warn­er sat through her client’s in­ter­view with po­lice that evening, not­ing that she felt there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port claims of any wrong­do­ing.

El­der, in her ad­dress to re­porters, al­so ques­tioned the mo­tive be­hind

Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ar­rest and called for full dis­clo­sure on the ba­sis of her client’s ar­rest and ques­tion­ing.

“Who or­ches­trat­ed this? Was it de­signed to hu­mil­i­ate the com­mis­sion­er? Is there a hid­den agen­da some­where there?” El­der asked.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was served with a no­tice of her sus­pen­sion while she re­mained in cus­tody on Jan­u­ary 31.

In her ab­sence, then DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin was ap­point­ed as act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er for the next five months un­til Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was ap­point­ed as sub­stan­tive com­mis­sion­er on June 17.

But the process of se­lect­ing a po­lice com­mis­sion­er in it­self faced scruti­ny fol­low­ing Ben­jamin’s act­ing ap­point­ment to lead the TTPS, as for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams de­scribed the process as “cum­ber­some and un­nec­es­sary” as he ques­tioned why a par­lia­men­tary process was need­ed for a po­lice com­mis­sion­er to leave the coun­try for a few days.

For­mer mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin was al­so crit­i­cal of the se­lec­tion process, as he ar­gued that the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments could al­low for it to be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by favouritism and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

First triple mur­der of the year on Feb­ru­ary 2

On Feb­ru­ary 22, Ani­cia James, 47, her com­mon-law hus­band, Mitchell Fran­cois, 30, and her broth­er, Anslem James, 49, were gunned down dur­ing a home in­va­sion at their Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma, home.

The triple mur­der took place five months af­ter the mur­ders of sib­lings Shane Pe­terkin, Faith Pe­terkin, Ar­i­an­na Pe­terkin and Tiffany Pe­terkin in the same area.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, the killers ap­proached the home from a forest­ed por­tion of land be­hind the prop­er­ty.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said it was like­ly that the killers es­caped in a track which led to the for­est.

Be­tween Ju­ly and Au­gust 2024, eight peo­ple were killed in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in and around the Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma, which po­lice sus­pect was part of a larg­er pow­er strug­gle be­tween ri­val gangs vy­ing for con­trol in the area.

As of De­cem­ber 9, homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors have con­firmed that no­body has been charged with the mur­der of the trio but main­tained that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­mains “open and ac­tive”.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment ear­li­er this month, head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion North Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Sher­ma May­nard-Wil­son ac­knowl­edged that while the area posed a chal­lenge with clus­ters of mur­ders be­tween late last year and ear­li­er this year, a mul­ti-pronged po­lice in­ter­ven­tion yield­ed some re­sults by not on­ly tack­ling crime at an op­er­a­tional lev­el but al­so through en­hanced com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions ini­tia­tives.

“We have had a very strong com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment which has re­sult­ed in a greater lev­el of trust in that area, a num­ber of peo­ple will­ing to work with the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice of­fi­cers, and the com­mu­ni­ty is rep­re­sent­ing it­self with a de­cline in homi­cides and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in that space.

“The record is show­ing that de­cline from prob­a­bly around June com­ing for­ward to present.”

The North­ern Di­vi­sion North con­sists of com­mu­ni­ties with­in the Mal­oney, Ari­ma, Mal­abar, Pin­to Road, La Hor­quet­ta, Cu­mu­to and San Rafael com­mu­ni­ties.