Con­cern­ing, dis­ap­point­ing and even ap­palling.

This was the gen­er­al con­sen­sus from some mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on the reap­point­ment of Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Last week, a re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed that the Cab­i­net on May 13 ad­vised Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to ex­tend Christo­pher’s ser­vice as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for one year un­der Sec­tion 75(a) of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in Feb­ru­ary 2023, when the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved her as the coun­try’s first-ever fe­male com­mis­sion­er of po­lice.

Since her tak­ing up her po­si­tion, she has been ac­cused of fail­ing to keep a grip on crime.

Sun­day Busi­ness reached out to sev­er­al busi­ness­es to gar­ner their per­spec­tives on Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s reap­point­ment.

Ang­ie Jairam, pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce who de­scribed busi­ness con­fi­dence and in­vest­ment at an all-time low, said “it is ap­palling to have a fail­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er reap­point­ed.”

“In the pri­vate sec­tor, when you fail to per­form, you have to leave. But I ask my­self what are the re­sults that the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to achieve by ex­tend­ing the tenure of Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher?”

“If the homi­cide rate, dri­ve-by shoot­ings and home in­va­sions con­tin­ue to in­crease, then busi­nes­sown­ers will be­lieve that they will have no choice but to sell out their en­ter­pris­es and mi­grate,” she added.

Fur­ther, Jairam said Firearms Users’ Li­cences (FULs), need­ed by busi­nes­sown­ers to de­fend them­selves, are be­com­ing “out of reach” as she said the cur­rent com­mis­sion­er has been plac­ing “high bar­ri­ers for le­git­i­mate busi­nes­sown­ers to ob­tain le­gal firearms.

“In fact, un­der this com­mis­sion­er, it is eas­i­er for crim­i­nals to ob­tain an il­le­gal firearm than for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to ob­tain a FUL. And this de­vel­op­ment, along with her very poor per­for­mance does not in­spire con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS),” Jairam said.

There has been much crit­i­cism from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty over the slow rate at which FULs are be­ing grant­ed.

In March this year, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad crit­i­cised Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s “fail­ure and con­tin­u­ous” de­lay in de­cid­ing whether to grant or de­ny an FUL ap­pli­ca­tion by To­ba­go busi­ness­man Pheon Solomon, cit­ing it as un­rea­son­able and in con­flict with the pol­i­cy set out by sec­tion 17 of the Firearms Act and there­fore un­law­ful and il­le­gal.

Daphne Bartlett, pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion al­so ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, as she too said she was dis­ap­point­ed in Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ex­ten­sion. She ex­pressed con­cern that giv­en the im­pact of crime on busi­ness­es, this is like­ly to wors­en in 2024 due to var­i­ous fac­tors.

“The es­ca­lat­ing gang war­fare, cou­pled with the il­le­gal drugs and arms trade, pose a sig­nif­i­cant. Are the po­lice mo­ti­vat­ed and or­gan­ised suf­fi­cient­ly to min­imise crime?” she asked.

Al­so not­ing that crime re­mains on the up­surge, gang vi­o­lence as well as an in­crease in dri­ve-by shoot­ings and home in­va­sions, Emer­son Chadee, Pres­i­dent of the Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce said “the whole coun­try is in a state of be­wil­der­ment and trep­i­da­tion ow­ing to the com­mis­sion­er’s ex­ten­sion.”

Fur­ther, he said such a move can pos­si­bly re­sult in re­duced busi­ness in­vest­ments, ris­ing costs of goods and ser­vices, as the small and mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es sec­tor may have fork out more mon­ey for ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems if crime con­tin­ues un­abat­ed.

Chadee al­so agreed that the com­mis­sion­er ought to re­think the method­ol­o­gy she has put in place for el­i­gi­ble cit­i­zens to ob­tain FULs.

Oth­er­wise, he warned, she can pos­si­bly face a bar­rage of lit­i­ga­tions.

In her new year ahead, the var­i­ous busi­ness­es have al­so put for­ward cer­tain rec­om­men­da­tions that they be­lieve can help while at the same time main­tain­ing that they are ready to fa­cil­i­tate di­a­logue and fos­ter any type of col­lab­o­ra­tions with Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

As it re­lates to greater law en­force­ment vis­i­bil­i­ty, Bartlett called for na­tion­wide joint army/po­lice pa­trols.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she ad­vised that a more a con­cert­ed ef­fort be made to re­store and op­er­a­tionalise the CCTV sys­tems along the na­tion’s high­ways, main roads and with­in all com­mu­ni­ties.

This, Bartlett said can en­sure crime can be de­tect­ed and solved more ef­fec­tive­ly and that per­pe­tra­tors can be brought to jus­tice in a swift man­ner.

Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, vice-pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers ad­vised there be a new style of lead­er­ship with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

“This new com­mis­sion­er must be able to in­spire of­fi­cers and build morale and mo­ti­va­tion among the ex­ist­ing cadre of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers. Thus, a new com­mis­sion­er must be some­one who en­gages with stake­hold­ers, in­spires con­fi­dence with­in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and dis­plays a high de­gree of fear­less­ness to­wards the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“The new com­mis­sion­er must be a crit­i­cal and strate­gic thinker who can de­vise plans to mit­i­gate crime and build teams with­in the TTPS,” Mo­hammed ex­plained.

Build­ing pub­lic trust and and in­vestor con­fi­dence, he added is al­so im­por­tant which can even en­cour­age cit­i­zens to come for­ward to re­port crime.

Re­gard­ing sus­tained and in­creased joint pa­trols, Mo­hammed said there ought to be greater and deep­er co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the Po­lice Ser­vice and the De­fence Force to make this hap­pen, say­ing many res­i­dents who live in the main­stream com­mu­ni­ties have been com­plain­ing they have not been wit­ness­ing such pa­trols which they said was “very trou­bling and wor­ri­some.”

As it per­tains to the use of tech­nol­o­gy in crime-fight­ing, Mo­hammed said not on­ly are well-func­tion­ing CCTV cam­eras crit­i­cal along high­ways and com­mu­ni­ties but ad­vanced sys­tems such as satel­lite tech­nol­o­gy should al­so be used to track and cap­ture per­pe­tra­tors of crimes.

In the area of strat­e­gy de­vel­op­ment, Mo­hammed called for as­sis­tance from in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies such as the FBI and MI5.

How­ev­er, he said there is a big­ger is­sue which aris­es.

The main ques­tion, Mo­hammed said is why has the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion not im­ple­ment­ed any kind of suc­ces­sion plan­ning with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

“Why aren’t oth­er of­fi­cers with­in the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead?” he fur­ther asked.

In this vein, Rashid Ali, Pres­i­dent of the Cunu­pia Busi­ness Cham­ber main­tained that in build­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive re­la­tion­ship, con­tin­u­ous di­a­logue must take place with all stake­hold­ers to ar­rive at mean­ing­ful so­lu­tions.