Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

“Ex­cel­lent!” This is how Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher rates her per­for­mance in of­fice to date.

The CoP was re­spond­ing to re­porters at the 100th an­niver­sary of the TTPS’ Sports Day at the Po­lice Acad­e­my grounds in St James, yes­ter­day.

Ini­tial­ly, Hare­wood-Christo­pher de­clined to speak to the me­dia, but as she walked back to the pavil­ion af­ter the march past, she was asked by a re­porter to rate her per­for­mance af­ter al­most 100 days in of­fice. She re­spond­ed con­fi­dent­ly, “Ex­cel­lent”, then added, “You have time to check 100 days? I’ve been busy work­ing.”

Her ap­point­ment by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) took ef­fect on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2023. Last Tues­day, ahead of her 60th birth­day (the re­tire­ment age) the Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to ex­tend the ser­vice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), for the pe­ri­od May 15, 2023, to May 24, 2024.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 75 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, the Pres­i­dent, where it is con­sid­ered in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, may ex­tend the years of ser­vice of an of­fi­cer in the First Di­vi­sion af­ter the of­fi­cer has reached the pre­scribed age of re­tire­ment.

“We com­plied with the law of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act and the Com­mis­sion­er con­tin­ues in of­fice past her 60th birth­day on the ba­sis of that,” Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said when asked about the CoP’s ex­ten­sion at the sports day.

With T&T’s mur­der rate spi­ralling fol­low­ing a bloody start to 2023, Hare­wood-Christo­pher, dur­ing a Par­lia­ment Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in March, promised an end to the blood­let­ting and to de­crease the mur­der rate by June 2023.

Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher, right, presents march past queen winner, Zakiyah Abdullah, with her trophy at the St James Barracks yesterday.

The JSC was called to gain an un­der­stand­ing of the an­ti-crime strate­gies be­ing utilised by the TTPS to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try.

At that time 104 mur­ders were record­ed, a num­ber that has since dou­bled as the cur­rent count stands at 223, with three mur­ders record­ed yes­ter­day.

Mere weeks lat­er, Hare­wood-Christo­pher, ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) at Sig­na­ture Hall in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, ad­mit­ted that sup­press­ing the mur­der rate is still “a bit be­yond” the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the TTPS and that di­vine in­ter­ven­tion was need­ed to fix the mur­der rate.  

“An evil has spread over the land and we must recog­nise, those of you who are spir­i­tu­al­ly in­clined, you must recog­nise that this is be­yond the phys­i­cal and un­less we seek the in­ter­ven­tion of that greater spir­it, what­ev­er we may call him, we know we have dif­fer­ent re­li­gions, so who will call him God, who will call him Al­lah, or Kr­ish­na, all of us, if not all of us, 99 per cent of us be­lieve in a su­pe­ri­or be­ing and we need to in­voke the help of that be­ing if we need to re­al­ly bring Trinidad and To­ba­go back to that place where we want it to be,” she had said.

The Op­po­si­tion slammed Hare­wood-Christo­pher for the state­ment and said it was in­sult­ing to vic­tims of crime. While re­li­gious lead­ers sup­port­ed her call, they in­sist­ed it must be backed up by prop­er crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

In April, Hare­wood-Christo­pher un­veiled the po­lice’s ten-point an­ti-crime plan. Ac­cord­ing to her, it looks at the dis­man­tling of gangs, and the re­trieval of guns and re­sources for po­lice. They will al­so look at drugs, guns, and hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Hinds, af­ter a meet­ing with Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Chief of De­fence Staff Dar­ryl Daniel, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley gave the law en­force­ment heads Gov­ern­ment’s

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com­mit­ment that they will get the re­sources they need to ex­e­cute their plans.

“We took the de­ci­sions yes­ter­day since they said they need­ed cer­tain oth­er re­sources. They will be pro­vid­ed in quick or­der and I got that as a di­rec­tive from the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter as well,” Hinds ex­plained on April 14.

Both Hinds and Hare­wood-Christo­pher were at the sports day where they ob­served 28 March past teams from var­i­ous di­vi­sions, sec­tions, and branch­es.

In the end, the reign­ing cham­pi­ons the Guard and Emer­gency Branch de­fend­ed their 2019 ti­tle which was the po­lice’s last sports day due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Sergeant Adeli­na Hospedales of GEB said they have been train­ing tire­less­ly to en­sure they de­fend their ti­tle, but ad­mit­ted that it was not easy jug­gling work and prac­tice.

“So we start­ed prac­tis­ing just un­der a month ago and we have had sev­er­al in­ter­rup­tions be­cause of du­ties, so on the days that we ac­tu­al­ly get to prac­tice we had to put in ex­tra hours,” Hospedales said.

Dur­ing their win­ning pre­sen­ta­tion, the marchers rou­tine high­light­ed the four per cent of­fer by the Gov­ern­ment but Hospedales said, “It was just for com­e­dy.”

Many of the teams ei­ther high­light­ed that is­sue or the po­lice’s first fe­male com­mis­sion­er. Hinds said he was en­cour­aged by the marchers.

“When I saw the dis­ci­pline, the team­work, the or­gan­i­sa­tion, and the num­bers of po­lice of­fi­cers and agents of the po­lice ser­vice here to­day I am en­tire­ly en­cour­aged,” he said.

He said they all par­tic­i­pat­ed in a re­treat lat­er that day.