DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher says she has no choice but to send se­nior of­fi­cers on leave be­cause they are close to burn-out.

She made the com­ment yes­ter­day, as she de­fend­ed her ac­tion in the wake of a ris­ing crime surge which prompt­ed the Pres­i­dent to call out De­fence Force Re­serves to boost the an­ti-crime dri­ve and a call from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for of­fi­cers to re­dou­ble their ef­forts to root out crim­i­nals.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the CoP said T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was in an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion caused by of­fi­cers work­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly over ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods, which had led to some rack­ing up va­ca­tion leave sur­pass­ing two to three years.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said leave was giv­en to of­fi­cers on a phased ba­sis as the TTPS grap­ples with “un­de­sir­ably high in­ci­dents of crime” while main­tain­ing an ad­e­quate com­ple­ment of its hu­man re­source on a sus­tained and pro­tract­ed ba­sis.

“This sit­u­a­tion is detri­men­tal to both the of­fi­cer and the or­gan­i­sa­tion, as it presents the po­ten­tial for is­sues re­lat­ed to health and wel­fare and work-life bal­ance and pos­si­bil­i­ties of di­min­ish­ing re­turns for the of­fi­cer and loss of ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness in op­er­a­tions for the or­gan­i­sa­tion and is sim­ply not a vi­able po­si­tion,” she said.

“As a con­se­quence, and as an ini­tia­tive to mit­i­gate the risk and the li­a­bil­i­ty of ex­ces­sive va­ca­tion leave en­ti­tle­ments, the ser­vice has im­ple­ment­ed a pol­i­cy by sched­ul­ing such of­fi­cers to utilise por­tions of their leave on a phased and con­trolled ba­sis. These of­fi­cers will, how­ev­er, re­main avail­able to be re­called if the cir­cum­stances so war­rant,” she added.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher fur­ther not­ed that of­fi­cers may be trans­ferred to sup­ple­ment those on leave. How­ev­er, she as­sured all trans­fers will be done pru­dent­ly to en­sure the best fit to de­liv­er the max­i­mum re­sults in the po­si­tions they are as­signed to.

How­ev­er, the CoP not­ed that every­day crime-fight­ing will not be af­fect­ed, in part, due to the in­clu­sion of 100 De­fence Force re­serves.

“The TTPS wish­es to as­sure the pub­lic that it re­mains acute­ly sen­si­tive of the lev­el of polic­ing that the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion war­rants, and that its an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives will not be com­pro­mised by of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ing on leave. Fur­ther, the ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sures that the process is be­ing ef­fec­tive­ly man­aged, as it must be, both in the short- and long-term in­ter­est of the ser­vice, and the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the coun­try,” she said.

“It is in this con­text al­so, that the TTPS wel­comed the re­cent sup­ple­men­ta­tion of the ser­vice with mem­bers of the De­fence Force, as an ini­tia­tive that will pro­vide us with ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty to sup­port the main­te­nance and in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of our an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions.”

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice ser­vice reg­u­la­tions, of­fi­cers with less than ten years’ ser­vice are en­ti­tled to 28 work­ing days off an­nu­al­ly and em­ployed for more than a decade are en­ti­tled to 35 work­ing days off. This does not fac­tor in sick, study and in­jury leave.

De­spite Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s state­ment, how­ev­er, for­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith is ques­tion­ing why leave was grant­ed to se­nior of­fi­cers af­ter it was pre­vi­ous­ly blocked on Au­gust 23.

Grif­fith, who served from 2018 to 2021, said, “Whether this is go­ing to af­fect the op­er­a­tions of the po­lice ser­vice or not, that is her call, and it will re­main to be seen. What I find very cu­ri­ous is just two months ago, in Au­gust or so, be­cause of the crime surge, she stat­ed that no one is to go on leave. So, what caused the goal­post to have shift­ed where just a few months ago no po­lice of­fi­cer could have gone on leave, and now just a few months lat­er, we are see­ing very se­nior of­fi­cers who hold very strate­gic po­si­tions go­ing on leave for sev­er­al months if not years. I shud­der to think it is be­cause of any per­son­al is­sues per­tain­ing to the se­nior of­fi­cers that may cause this,” he said.

He al­so claimed that the 100 re­serve TTDF mem­bers meant to aid the TTPS will not be on the ground. In­stead, he said they will be sta­tioned at army camps, hold­ing down the fort as reg­u­lar sol­diers join the TTPS in ex­er­cis­es.

“This is stan­dard op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures that has been done for sev­er­al years. It is not an op­er­a­tional plan, it is not strate­gic,” he said.

Mean­while, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son said he does not be­lieve of­fi­cers will be de­mor­alised by se­niors be­ing sent on va­ca­tion.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that of­fi­cers would have had to ac­cu­mu­late so much leave be­cause the as­so­ci­a­tion con­tin­ues to push for work-life bal­ance and a lot of these leave al­so would have oc­curred par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause we would have had leave re­stric­tions along the way,” he ex­plained.

He sug­gest­ed that ju­nior of­fi­cers will like­ly be in­spired by their su­pe­ri­ors.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the is­sue, a re­tired se­nior TTPS of­fi­cer said of­fi­cers should not be blamed for the high leave ac­crued.

“It is not the fault of a lot of the of­fi­cers be­cause over the pe­ri­od of years, with re­la­tion to COVID and then even be­fore and with the crime sit­u­a­tion, it was dif­fi­cult for a lot of the of­fi­cers to take leave as re­quired and on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions leave was, in fact, re­strict­ed and es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the pe­ri­od from Christ­mas to Car­ni­val. There is, in fact, a plan to send per­sons on leave but it has to be done in a bal­anced man­ner, bal­anc­ing the in­ter­est of crime-fight­ing and the in­ter­est of the of­fi­cers. It was some­thing that was put in place be­fore,” the source said.