Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is de­fend­ing her of­fi­cers, fol­low­ing claims of cor­rup­tion by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemul dur­ing the 2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Tues­day.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Teemal said the TTPS needs to re­struc­tured be­cause of cor­rup­tion in the ser­vice.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the CoP said the TTPS is not a per­fect or­gan­i­sa­tion and ex­pe­ri­ences dis­cred­itable con­duct amongst its ranks.

How­ev­er, she said, “I feel an oblig­a­tion to stand in de­fence of the vast ma­jor­i­ty of hard work­ing and ded­i­cat­ed of­fi­cers, who, though ma­ligned al­most on a dai­ly ba­sis, of­ten with­out cause, con­tin­ue to serve this in­sti­tu­tion and our coun­try with ut­most in­tegri­ty. It is un­for­tu­nate that it is at all pos­si­ble that their ster­ling ef­forts at pro­tect­ing and serv­ing are of­ten eclipsed by the neg­a­tive sen­ti­ments cre­at­ed by the con­duct of a mi­nor­i­ty.”

She al­so called on cit­i­zens to de­sist from mak­ing care­less state­ments about of­fi­cers.

“It is al­so in­cum­bent on me to ap­peal to cit­i­zens to re­sist the temp­ta­tion of mak­ing un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed state­ments about per­ceived po­lice cor­rup­tion that serve on­ly to dis­cred­it the po­lice and em­bold­en the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, there­by mak­ing it so much more dif­fi­cult for the po­lice to get the pub­lic’s co­op­er­a­tion in the fight against crime,” she said.