Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The re­cent court or­der paving the way for the re­in­state­ment of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has trig­gered re­newed con­cerns about in­sta­bil­i­ty and pub­lic trust in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

This was the con­cern of for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) mem­ber and Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor Clive Dot­tin yes­ter­day, as he said the sit­u­a­tion has cre­at­ed a cri­sis of con­fi­dence and could deep­en in­sti­tu­tion­al dis­com­fort with­in the ranks.

“I must tell you that these are some anx­ious mo­ments and mu­tu­al loss of trust and con­fi­dence in the hi­er­ar­chy of the po­lice ser­vice. This case has not helped it when you have a po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­ing ar­rest­ed. The pub­lic, it must be ex­pect­ed, will con­tin­ue to lose con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice.”

Dot­tin, who is cur­rent­ly in St Lu­cia, said the un­prece­dent­ed turn of events, where ju­nior of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed their for­mer com­mis­sion­er, on­ly for her to be re­turned to her sub­stan­tive post by the High Court, has set a trou­bling prece­dent that risks dam­ag­ing morale with­in the TTPS and shak­ing pub­lic trust in its lead­er­ship.

“She (Hare­wood-Christo­pher) will have to de­ter­mine whether she wants to re­turn, whether it is three days or three months or three years, to work with the same group of of­fi­cers and that to my mind is a judge­ment that she alone and her ad­vis­ers will have to guide her on,” he said.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was await­ing a con­fir­ma­tion let­ter from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) on her re­in­state­ment last evening.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was de­tained on Jan­u­ary 31 by a team of of­fi­cers led by Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Suzette Mar­tin. She was ac­cused of al­leged­ly sign­ing off on a firearms im­port li­cence on Oc­to­ber 10, 2023, for the pro­cure­ment of two sniper ri­fles for use by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA). She was sub­se­quent­ly sus­pend­ed by the PolSC. How­ev­er, she was re­leased from cus­tody on Feb­ru­ary 1.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s fi­nal court hear­ing, High Court Judge Christo­pher Sieuc­hand ruled that Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s sus­pen­sion by the PolSC was law­ful, in the pub­lic in­ter­est and was not against the laws of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

Dot­tin said the law of the land must be fol­lowed.

“I be­lieve there are some heavy roads to nav­i­gate go­ing for­ward. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has an oner­ous task on its hands be­cause they have to move with­out fear and with­out favour and do an hon­est as­sess­ment of all those who have been short-list­ed. My un­der­stand­ing is that a num­ber of per­sons have been short-list­ed for the post. Will she be added to that list or is part of it?” he said.

For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams echoed con­cerns raised by Dot­tin. He told Guardian Me­dia that the sus­pen­sion of Hare­wood-Christo­pher with­out charges be­ing laid would have im­pact­ed pub­lic con­fi­dence and per­cep­tion of the po­lice.

“The fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple when you are con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, you need to be sat­is­fied in your po­si­tion. It is not just mere rea­son­able sus­pi­cion for you to ar­rest a per­son and re­lease a per­son. This, in my opin­ion, would have af­fect­ed the po­lice ser­vice in a sig­nif­i­cant way.”

Williams de­scribed the en­tire process as “ir­reg­u­lar.”