Trinidad and To­ba­go finds it­self in an un­en­vi­able po­si­tion with a very dark cloud cur­rent­ly hang­ing over its law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and in­sti­tu­tions charged with the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens.

In­deed, in the space of five days, we have seen not on­ly the hor­ri­fy­ing mur­der of po­lice cor­po­ral Anusha Ever­s­ley in­side the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion with per­pe­tra­tors mak­ing off with over 100 guns from the ar­moury, but al­so one of Ever­s­ley’s col­leagues be­ing im­pli­cat­ed in the crime and oth­ers sus­pend­ed as the probe con­tin­ues.

Even more as­tound­ing is an al­le­ga­tion that there may have been of­fi­cers work­ing in tan­dem with crim­i­nal el­e­ments to sell guns stored at the sta­tion to the high­est bid­der.

This al­le­ga­tion has now fil­tered its way in­to the pub­lic do­main, along with sug­ges­tions that a lack of prop­er man­age­ment of the di­vi­sion al­lowed not on­ly a sit­u­a­tion where law en­force­ment of­fi­cers broke their oath to the peo­ple, but felt em­bold­ened enough to mur­der one of their own col­leagues, per­haps un­der the be­lief they could es­cape un­scathed. All of this is oc­cur­ring at a time when pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is al­ready run­ning low, and the coun­try is sup­pos­ed­ly un­der a height­ened state of alert due to the im­po­si­tion of a State of Emer­gency.

This ug­ly episode rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about how can­di­dates for both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS) and, by ex­ten­sion, the TTPS, are screened, as well as how these en­ti­ties are man­aged by those in charge of a crit­i­cal arm of the State’s law en­force­ment op­er­a­tions.

In fact, even though the TTMPS and the TTPS op­er­ate un­der two sep­a­rate min­istries—Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment—the stench of this lat­est in­ci­dent has en­veloped the en­tire law en­force­ment sec­tor.

Two things must hap­pen now for both en­ti­ties to re­cov­er from this sit­u­a­tion. First­ly, the TTPS of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter must swift­ly bring the case to a con­clu­sion and en­sure all per­pe­tra­tors are brought to jus­tice. This is crit­i­cal, giv­en the ap­par­ent ease with which the ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ty al­leged to have been go­ing on in the sta­tion oc­curred for the pe­ri­od of time it did, be­fore this in­ci­dent brought it to light.

Sec­ond­ly, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­ja Ameen, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and who­ev­er sits at the helm of the TTMPS must put their heads to­geth­er to come up with a cred­i­ble plan since it is al­ready quite ob­vi­ous that the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice ser­vice can­not con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing in the man­ner it cur­rent­ly does.

For clar­i­ty, it must be point­ed out that while TTPS and TTMPS can­di­dates go through the same train­ing and have the same pow­ers of ar­rest, the du­ties of of­fi­cers with­in the en­ti­ties vary. The TTPS is the na­tion­al body with ju­ris­dic­tion over ma­jor na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues and crimes, while the TTMPS fo­cus­es on com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and en­forc­ing lo­cal by-laws with­in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

How­ev­er, now that this in­ci­dent has ex­posed a ma­jor na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty breach, giv­en that the bulk of the stolen guns re­main on the streets in the hands of crim­i­nals, our au­thor­i­ties can­not op­er­ate as if it is busi­ness as usu­al.

More­over, CoP Gue­var­ro must keep cit­i­zens in the loop on the progress of this on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion, giv­en that none of us will be able to rest easy un­til those be­hind this sin­is­ter act no longer pose a na­tion­al threat.