The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has di­rect­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to pro­ceed on six­ty-six (66) days’ va­ca­tion leave with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who has been serv­ing as Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er since 6 Feb­ru­ary 2025, will re­main in the post. The Min­istry con­firmed that his ap­point­ment stands un­til the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion ad­vis­es oth­er­wise. No such ad­vi­so­ry has been is­sued.

The Min­istry as­sured that the op­er­a­tions of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed un­der Ben­jamin’s stew­ard­ship.

It al­so for­mal­ly ac­knowl­edged Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s over four decades of ex­em­plary ser­vice to the na­tion, not­ing that her ded­i­ca­tion and lead­er­ship sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vanced the Po­lice Ser­vice and pub­lic safe­ty.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract of­fi­cial­ly ends to­day. How­ev­er, de­spite the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions rul­ing on Sat­ur­day that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to charge her in re­la­tion to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency sniper ri­fle pro­cure­ment, she has yet to re­ceive a for­mal let­ter lift­ing her sus­pen­sion or ex­tend­ing her con­tract.