Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has re­ceived the sup­port of sev­er­al of this coun­try’s ma­jor busi­ness cham­bers and as­so­ci­a­tions fol­low­ing her promise to re­duce mur­ders in three months.

“We are, how­ev­er, hope­ful, and op­ti­mistic that the new CoP will im­ple­ment mea­sures that can bear pos­i­tive re­sults. In­deed, it is en­cour­ag­ing to hear about the goals that are be­ing set for the TTPS. The Joint Cham­bers com­mend her for this,” the Joint Cham­bers stat­ed in a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day.

The Joint Cham­bers com­prise the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, and the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud said he un­der­stood the scep­ti­cism sur­round­ing the tar­get set by Hare­wood-Christo­pher, but felt her call was in­tend­ed to gal­vanise the po­lice ser­vice.

“We un­der­stand that the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is some­what doubt­ful about promis­es be­ing made but we al­so be­lieve that but if you aim for the moon, you may hit the stars,” Aboud said.

“The com­mis­sion­er is per­haps try­ing to en­cour­age troops and fel­low of­fi­cers to make an ex­tra ef­fort to at­tain the ob­jec­tives which she has set out, he said.

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC) wished the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er the best of luck in get­ting the mur­der rate to go down by June.

And the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) said the state­ment by the COP and her in­ten­tions are ful­ly sup­port­ed by the Cham­ber.

The Joint Cham­bers stat­ed that crime, in par­tic­u­lar vi­o­lent crimes, have been at “alarm­ing and un­ac­cept­able lev­els for some time now.”

“This is a ma­jor im­ped­i­ment to in­vest­ment, the ease of do­ing busi­ness and over­all has a tremen­dous neg­a­tive im­pact on the well-be­ing of cit­i­zens who ei­ther are vic­tims or are con­stant­ly in fear of falling vic­tim to crime,” it stat­ed.

The Joint Cham­bers stat­ed that this year be­gan on a “ter­ri­ble note” with the mur­der fig­ures for Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, putting this year on course to be the dead­liest ever in T&T.

“While we com­mend the TTPS for their work to en­sure that there were no ma­jor crimes at of­fi­cial Car­ni­val events, sev­er­al mur­ders and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes oc­curred through­out the coun­try dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od,” it stat­ed.

“We al­so un­der­stand that the new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, hav­ing been ap­point­ed just a month ago, has had lim­it­ed time to make an im­pact on crime re­duc­tion in the coun­try,” it stat­ed.

The Joint Cham­bers said the group is of the firm be­lief that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion should pub­licly pub­lish tar­gets and have the TTPS re­port on these on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis and the CoP should do the same for her di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders.

The Joint Cham­bers said it has al­ready re­quest­ed a meet­ing with Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“We look for­ward to the un­veil­ing of the method­ol­o­gy that would as­sist them in achiev­ing these tar­gets. We have al­ready re­quest­ed and re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion of a meet­ing with the new CoP and, as al­ways, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­mains will­ing to as­sist as crime re­duc­tion in the coun­try is of para­mount im­por­tance to the na­tion,” it stat­ed.

Mean­while, Aboud said time will tell if the Com­mis­sion­er’s bold state­ment would be­come an achiev­able tar­get but stressed that she had DO­MA’s sup­port.

“We are cer­tain­ly keep­ing a very close eye on the per­for­mance, keep­ing a close eye on all the sta­tis­tics to judge the per­for­mance. But the com­mis­sion­er has our sup­port in try­ing to reach the ob­jec­tive that she is set our best wish­es and in suc­ceed­ing. Hav­ing said that, we will take no chances re­gard­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. We will spare no ef­fort but to be sup­port­ive of the ini­tia­tives which are be­ing pro­posed. And we are hope­ful on be­half of the city and the coun­try that this Com­mis­sion­er will suc­ceed,” he said.

Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, the pres­i­dent of the CPLCC, said while he did not dis­miss the CoP’s pro­pos­al as a pie in the sky, he said more leg­is­la­tion needs to be en­act­ed.

“We need both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion to en­act leg­is­la­tion that would lead to a re­duc­tion of crime. The high rate of crime is dam­ag­ing the econ­o­my. I would like to see the CoP work to­wards the re­duc­tion and re­moval of crim­i­nal el­e­ments in the po­lice and pro­tec­tive ser­vice. We can­not be striv­ing to re­duce crime and then we see law­less po­lice­men in­volved with gangs and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. This places a gen­er­al mis­trust in the po­lice,” Ram­s­ingh said.

“Mem­bers of the pub­lic are un­will­ing to work with the po­lice be­cause many fear that this in­for­ma­tion may go back to the crim­i­nals who may then tar­get them. We at the cham­ber have as­sist­ed the po­lice in the past and are will­ing to as­sist them again. We are see­ing an in­crease in pa­trols in Cou­va, this may help in keep­ing down the rate of home in­va­sions. We have a project com­ing on­stream by the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023 that would al­low the Cou­va Po­lice greater ac­cess to cam­era footage,” he said.

Head of the CCIC Bal­dath Ma­haraj said “Crime is not an overnight fix and she is giv­ing the ser­vice a few months for her strate­gies to show suc­cess.”

“Whilst her strate­gies were not shared, that in it­self is a good move. The crim­i­nals don’t need to know the next move by the po­lice. The cham­ber re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing any as­sis­tance nec­es­sary in this ven­ture. We sug­gest that le­gal­iz­ing pep­per spray should be re­con­sid­ered as this would give main­ly our fe­male pop­u­la­tion a first line of de­fence and a lev­el of com­fort,” Ma­haraj said.