Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­pervilel@guardian.co.tt

While he was un­will­ing to share his thoughts on the per­for­mance of em­bat­tled Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day said Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to sup­port her as long as she leads the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied whether Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract will be re­newed when it ex­pires in May.

Last week, Hare­wood-Christo­pher came un­der fire af­ter she ad­mit­ted be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that the po­lice failed to achieve all of its crime-fight­ing ob­jec­tives for 2023. Her re­spons­es al­so prompt­ed calls from the Op­po­si­tion for her re­moval.

How­ev­er, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, Row­ley dis­missed sug­ges­tions the CoP would be re­moved.

Asked if he was pleased with Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s per­for­mance, Row­ley said he would not make such a com­ment pub­licly, adding it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for him to cri­tique or “bad mouth” any pub­lic of­fi­cial.

“When these of­fi­cers are in po­si­tion, un­til such time where you come to the point where cer­tain ac­tion has to be tak­en, you ought to sup­port them to try to get the job done that they have been put there to do. Those things, if they have to emerge, they have to emerge in a par­tic­u­lar way and not by pub­lic com­men­tary,” Row­ley said.

“The head­line can­not be that the Prime Min­is­ter is up­set with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice be­cause she mis­spoke at a press con­fer­ence or some­thing like that.”

Row­ley said he has not had any in­ter­ac­tion with Hare­wood-Christo­pher since he re­turned to T&T from a vis­it to Wash­ing­ton, DC, but ac­knowl­edged she was in a “dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion”.

“She has a very dif­fi­cult job and even if things don’t go as well as we would like on a par­tic­u­lar day, that does not mean we should throw the ba­by out with the bath­wa­ter or be­have as though her ef­forts are to be ig­nored.”

De­spite this, Row­ley said he would not con­done poor per­for­mance.

“I’m not here say­ing that I’m sup­port­ing un­der­per­for­mance or that I’m sup­port­ing in­com­pe­tence or any such thing.”

Last May, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced that Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract was ex­tend­ed for one year.

By law, the manda­to­ry re­tire­ment age for a First Di­vi­sion Of­fi­cer is 60 years. Hare­wood-Christo­pher will be 61 on May 15.

Asked if her con­tract would be ex­tend­ed again, Row­ley said that was the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s (PolSC) re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“The Gov­ern­ment ex­pects that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion will hold some kind of con­ver­sa­tion and the PolSC will act at the ap­pro­pri­ate time,” he said.

“If any­thing is to be done, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, we put all au­thor­i­ty there and it is the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion will trig­ger the process, in­vite ap­pli­ca­tions, as­sess them and when a va­can­cy aris­es, put that to the Par­lia­ment. So that process is what is there in front of us. It has been an up­hill bat­tle.”

Re­fer­ring to sta­tis­tics ob­tained from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch of the TTPS, Row­ley said Hare­wood-Christo­pher was the first CoP in years to achieve a re­duc­tion in mur­ders.

Not­ing a 26 per cent drop in the mur­der toll in 2020 un­der the tenure of for­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, Row­ley at­trib­uted this de­cline to the lock­downs caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that year.

“Those are the facts, those are the fig­ures and they don’t say any­thing about who should stay or whose con­tract should be re­newed or so on. Those are de­ci­sions that should be tak­en in a more sober and ex­pand­ed analy­sis.”

He said the names of three can­di­dates for the role of Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (DCP) will be brought to Par­lia­ment im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Car­ni­val.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion ref­er­enc­ing a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence brought by the Op­po­si­tion against Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in 2023, Row­ley con­tend­ed that the Op­po­si­tion’s is­sue was over the per­son­al­i­ty of the of­fice hold­er rather than the work done.

He ad­mit­ted that while a “fresh face” may of­fer some new per­spec­tives and in­sight to ad­dress­ing chal­lenges, in­ex­pe­ri­ence could al­so af­fect the per­for­mance.

“It could al­so take away from the ex­pe­ri­ence that is be­ing put to bear. It might al­so in­ter­fere with the learn­ing curve and I guar­an­tee you if I gave you that port­fo­lio to­mor­row, the at­tack on you would be no dif­fer­ent than the one on Mr Hinds, be­cause the whole idea is to at­tack the per­son and dis­re­gard the work that is be­ing done.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment fol­low­ing the PM’s state­ment, TTPS So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) sec­re­tary In­sp Nathalie John said, “The Com­mis­sion­er may not have had the best ex­pe­ri­ence be­fore the JSC but sub­se­quent to that, you would have seen in the pa­per where she is do­ing bet­ter than peo­ple be­lieve she is. We still sup­port our com­mis­sion­er.”

TTPS mur­der re­duc­tion tar­gets and ac­tu­al fig­ures at­tained

2018: A five per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders was set. A 4.4 per cent in­crease in mur­ders was record­ed.

2019: A ten per cent re­duc­tion was set. A 4.5 per cent in­crease was record­ed

2020: A ten per cent re­duc­tion was set. A 26 per cent de­crease was record­ed. This was at­trib­uted to a re­stric­tion of move­ment caused by a lock­down and state of emer­gency due to COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that year.

2021: A five per cent re­duc­tion was set. A 12.5 per cent in­crease record­ed.

2022: Five per cent re­duc­tion set. A 34 per cent in­crease record­ed.

2023: A 20 per cent re­duc­tion set. A 4.8 per cent de­crease record­ed.

As of yes­ter­day morn­ing there were 50 mur­ders for 2024 com­pared to 70 for the same pe­ri­od last year.