Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day weighed in on the ex­ten­sion of the con­tract of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for an­oth­er year. He said, “The Cab­i­net would have looked at all the op­tions that are avail­able, and would have made the most rea­son­able op­tion which was to ex­tend the Com­mis­sion­er’s tenure while the (Po­lice) Ser­vice Com­mis­sion goes through the long and ar­du­ous process of find­ing some­one to sub­stan­tive­ly oc­cu­py the post.”

He fur­ther re­vealed, “We were ini­tial­ly hop­ing that dur­ing the pe­ri­od when Mrs Christo­pher was there, the Com­mis­sion would have moved to, at some stage, to be able to act ear­li­er...it didn’t hap­pen.”

Last week, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s term would be ex­tend­ed by an­oth­er year, just one day shy of her 61st birth­day.

Ad­mit­ting he had found the ad­vice that the post of CoP could be ad­ver­tised even whilst oc­cu­pied, con­fus­ing—the Prime Min­is­ter said fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC), “Ex­tend­ing the Com­mis­sion­er for a year, is a rea­son­able de­ci­sion.”

“And we ex­pect that the Com­mis­sion will con­tin­ue to put us in a po­si­tion, when that year would have end­ed, to say that the process­es al­low us to move to a sub­stan­tive post af­ter a wide search and some­one is ap­point­ed where this ex­ten­sion is not re­quired any fur­ther.”

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment was con­strained by the very reg­u­la­tions, laws and au­thor­i­ties they had en­act­ed and hence, they could not now act out­side of those pa­ra­me­ters.

Last­ly, he thanked Hare­wood-Christo­pher for her ef­forts on the job.

“I would like to thank Mrs Christo­pher for the ef­fort she has made be­cause I do know that any­body who is there, who has been there, they have be­come fair game for the neg­a­tives,” he said.

Cast­ing his mind back to the se­lec­tion and ap­point­ment of pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice in­clud­ing James Philbert, Stephen Williams and Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, Row­ley said the cur­rent sys­tem did not lend it­self to the cre­ation of best prac­tice man­age­ment.

Asked if it was time to con­sid­er chang­ing the law as it per­tained to the se­lec­tion of a CoP, he said, “We might be the on­ly coun­try in the world where the ap­point­ment of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice gives the coun­try so much trou­ble.”

Pressed to say if Gov­ern­ment should be ex­clud­ed from the ap­point­ment process, he an­swered, “The Gov­ern­ment can­not re­move it­self from its’ re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

Re­gard­ing the “good” rat­ing as­cribed to Hare­wood-Christo­pher by the PolSC on her per­for­mance in the past year, Row­ley said, “I did not do the analy­sis and it is not for me to be sat­is­fied.”

“It is for me to be cog­nizant of and for the Cab­i­net to be in­formed by.”

He de­nied the con­tin­ued tenure of the CoP had been done by de­fault.

On the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, Row­ley said he was not sat­is­fied with it and, “I don’t think any­body in the coun­try is.”

Claim­ing they were still pur­su­ing the ini­tia­tive to set up spe­cial vet­ted units, he said yes.

“We are still pur­su­ing that. We have some doc­u­ments to sign and we have some op­er­a­tions un­der­way. We have col­lab­o­ra­tion tak­ing place and the an­swer is that is a work in progress.”

As head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Row­ley sought to mo­ti­vate and en­cour­age all law en­force­ment agents in the face of cur­rent chal­lenges as he said, “My mes­sage to our se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices is to con­tin­ue to put your­selves be­tween the pop­u­la­tion and the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, and to give us the best.

“I want to en­cour­age the po­lice of­fi­cers, es­pe­cial­ly those who have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion, go­ing af­ter peo­ple who are en­gaged in crim­i­nal con­duct so that they can be held ac­count­able, and that is the on­ly way we will ame­lio­rate this threat and bring this sit­u­a­tion to a point where you don’t have this con­tin­u­ous killings and peo­ple look­ing for easy life by threat­en­ing and men­ac­ing oth­ers.”