Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James says that the pub­lic needs to hear from some­one in au­thor­i­ty to clear the air on the facts of the ar­rest and re­lease of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

She was ar­rest­ed last Thurs­day in con­nec­tion with the on­go­ing probe in­to the pro­cure­ment of two high-pow­ered ri­fles by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency.

James, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, ques­tioned who that au­thor­i­ta­tive voice would be.

“Will it be the lawyer? Will it be the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions? So we are, I think, in a stale­mate here. And peo­ple like me who analyse from the ev­i­dence of oth­er peo­ple or from the in­for­ma­tion that oth­er peo­ple bring. My judge­ment is that we don’t have enough in­for­ma­tion to speak au­thor­i­ta­tive­ly as com­men­ta­tors based on in­du­bitable facts. We don’t have in­du­bitable facts,” he ex­plained.

James said an­oth­er ques­tion that needs to be asked is if the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er can go back to the job. He not­ed that she does not have much time in the post as her con­tract, which was ex­tend­ed, will come to an end in May this year.

“We are not sure what’s go­ing on, but if she de­cides to sue the State, it will in­volve a lot of mon­ey, giv­en where she is placed, the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of her of­fice, and so on.

“I don’t know if she can eas­i­ly go back again, as I said, she doesn’t have a lot of time re­main­ing with this last con­tract,” James em­pha­sised.

Giv­ing his view on the mat­ter, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah said in the case of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s ar­rest and sub­se­quent re­lease, mul­ti­ple fac­tors con­tribute to the lev­el of un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the mat­ter.

“Was this a le­git­i­mate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to crim­i­nal mis­con­duct, or was it po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed? Were es­tab­lished due dili­gence and pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures for high-pow­ered weapons ig­nored, or is this a case of pro­ce­dur­al over­sight? These unan­swered ques­tions fu­el pub­lic dis­trust, po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy, and in­sti­tu­tion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for both law en­force­ment and the Gov­ern­ment to con­trol the cri­sis nar­ra­tive,” Heer­ah said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said the tim­ing—amidst an on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) and po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tions—rais­es con­cerns about whether this was a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­force­ment or an at­tempt to un­der­mine lead­er­ship with­in the TTPS.

Ex­press­ing the same sen­ti­ment as James, Heer­ah said the lack of clear, fac­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion from au­thor­i­ties fur­ther deep­ens the am­bi­gu­i­ty.

“When trans­paren­cy is ab­sent, the vac­u­um is filled by spec­u­la­tion, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring. The TTPS must now work to re­store cred­i­bil­i­ty by pro­vid­ing con­sis­tent, ev­i­dence-based up­dates, en­sur­ing that due process is fol­lowed, and re­in­forc­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al in­de­pen­dence. With­out ad­dress­ing the am­bi­gu­i­ty sur­round­ing the cause of the Com­mis­sion­er’s de­tain­ment, the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age to law en­force­ment and gov­er­nance in Trinidad and To­ba­go will per­sist, mak­ing fu­ture crises even more dif­fi­cult to man­age,” he out­lined.

Heer­ah added that clear, de­ci­sive lead­er­ship and a com­mit­ment to fact-based dis­clo­sures are es­sen­tial to re­solv­ing the cri­sis of un­cer­tain­ty that this in­ci­dent has cre­at­ed.