Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For­mer TTPS pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Sheri­don Hill says while the rep­u­ta­tion of the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has "tak­en a hit" in light of the ar­rest and sus­pen­sion of Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, the ex­ec­u­tive should now en­gage in some in­tro­spec­tion to re­build their im­age.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher signed her let­ter of re­in­state­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) at 6.21 yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, this was pre­ced­ed hours ear­li­er by a let­ter from the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty which or­dered her on 66 days' va­ca­tion leave with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who served as the head of the TTPS since Feb­ru­ary 6, thus con­tin­ued to lead the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Con­tact­ed on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day, Hill, now re­tired, said the lead­er­ship now had the task of restor­ing its rep­u­ta­tion and the pub­lic's per­cep­tion of it.

"This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the ser­vice to do some in­tro­spec­tion, look at where the po­lice ser­vice is and get the whole or­gan­i­sa­tion to move in a par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion.

"It's not go­ing to be an easy task, there will be in­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues like cul­ture and so on, but I think the lead­er­ship of the Po­lice Ser­vice, not just the com­mis­sion­er but the ex­ec­u­tive, should work on chang­ing the mind­set and get­ting the po­lice ser­vice to op­er­ate in a much more pro­fes­sion­al lev­el than where it is op­er­at­ing now."

He added, "I will al­ways wish the or­gan­i­sa­tion the very best. I wish who­ev­er is the next com­mis­sion­er of po­lice the very best."

Hill, who is al­so an at­tor­ney, said he did not see any con­cerns with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty no­ti­fy­ing the pub­lic of Hare­wood-Christo­pher's leave in­stead of the PolSC, as he felt there was no more un­cer­tain­ty over the sta­tus of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's lead­er­ship.

Hill al­so de­fend­ed the work of DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin and oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tors who in­ter­ro­gat­ed Hare­wood-Christo­pher, not­ing that they act­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly in their en­quiries.

Re­fer­ring to the judg­ment from Jus­tice Christo­pher Sieuchan on Mon­day, which dis­missed Hare­wood-Christo­pher's le­gal chal­lenge over her sus­pen­sion and com­ments from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, Hill said the in­ves­tiga­tive team should feel vin­di­cat­ed that they act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.