An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has de­scribed the pub­lic nar­ra­tive around a Pun­ish­er patch on his arm as trou­bling and dis­tract­ing.

Dur­ing the an­nounce­ment of a State of Emer­gency (SoE) last Fri­day at Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, the Pun­ish­er patch was ob­served pinned on the right arm of the CoP’s uni­form.

The top cop ex­plained then that the patch, de­pict­ing a skull, was pre­sent­ed to him dur­ing a mul­ti-agency in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tion. He said it was a tra­di­tion of law en­force­ment to wear it.

“In pro­fes­sion­al law en­force­ment and mil­i­tary cir­cles, the ex­change of patch­es and pins is a long­stand­ing tra­di­tion; one root­ed in mu­tu­al re­spect, recog­ni­tion of dis­tin­guished ser­vice, and the forg­ing of strate­gic al­liances dur­ing joint op­er­a­tions. The patch in ques­tion was pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion­er dur­ing his in­volve­ment in a con­fi­den­tial mul­ti-agency in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tion. Its pres­ence is not mere­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al, but em­blem­at­ic of col­lab­o­ra­tion and sol­i­dar­i­ty among glob­al en­force­ment bod­ies,” Gue­var­ro said.

How­ev­er, Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day ex­pressed dis­be­lief that his patch had since be­come the fo­cus of at­ten­tion.

“It is both un­for­tu­nate and mis­lead­ing that a sym­bol­ic to­ken of law en­force­ment co­op­er­a­tion has been dis­tort­ed to fu­el un­war­rant­ed con­tro­ver­sy.”

He crit­i­cised at­tempts to sen­sa­tion­alise the mat­ter, say­ing it was, “a dis­ser­vice not on­ly to the men and women com­mit­ted to pub­lic safe­ty but to the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion it­self.”

“At a time when fo­cus should right­ly be on crit­i­cal is­sues such as crime sup­pres­sion, com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, and in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, it is re­gret­table that a hand­ful of voic­es seek to dis­tract the pub­lic with mis­placed out­rage.”

He urged cit­i­zens not to al­low the rhetoric to turn their at­ten­tion away from what the au­thor­i­ties are do­ing dur­ing the SoE.

“In the face of es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal at­tacks and acts of vi­o­lence be­ing in­flict­ed up­on in­no­cent cit­i­zens, cer­tain voic­es have cho­sen to di­vert the na­tion­al dis­course to­ward a patch worn on a uni­form,” he said.

Gue­var­ro said it was re­gret­table some ef­forts have not been met with sup­port, and in­stead there has been an or­ches­trat­ed wave of dis­trac­tion aimed at un­der­min­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of his of­fice and the in­tegri­ty of law en­force­ment ini­tia­tives.

The CoP al­so re­newed his call for cit­i­zens to re­main fo­cused on the move by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to re­store se­cu­ri­ty and re­in­force trust.