At­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so has re­newed her call for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to hold off on her move to re­quire the re­new­al of fire users li­cences (FULs) for long-stand­ing hold­ers. 

Last Wednes­day, Al­fon­so, who is al­so a di­rec­tor of the Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute, wrote to Hare­wood-Christo­pher ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the move to is­sue of­fi­cial no­tices over the re­new­al re­quire­ments for all FUL hold­ers, in­clud­ing a $500 fee. 

Al­fon­so point­ed to Sec­tion 17(6) of the Firearms (Amend­ment) Act, which states that FULs grant­ed pri­or to the pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion in 2004 will re­main valid un­less ter­mi­nat­ed or re­voked. 

In a re­sponse is­sued on Thurs­day, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) le­gal of­fi­cer Anya Ra­mute-Mo­han promised to is­sue an of­fi­cial re­sponse to Al­fon­so’s con­cerns by Feb­ru­ary 1. 

Ra­mute-Mo­han sug­gest­ed that the short time­frame for a re­sponse sent by Al­fon­so in her ini­tial cor­re­spon­dence was un­rea­son­able. She al­so stat­ed that the TTPS was seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on the is­sue. 

“In fur­ther­ance of this, we al­so seek the pe­ri­od of time pre­vi­ous­ly re­quest­ed to prop­er­ly in­struct at­tor­neys and re­ceive their ad­vice,” Ra­mute-Mo­han said. 

Re­spond­ing to the let­ter, Al­fon­so claimed that the short dead­line was nec­es­sary, con­sid­er­ing that the dead­line for re­newals was set as April 1 and all FUL hold­ers are re­quired to com­ply. 

“These fac­tors un­der­score and make plain the need for ur­gency on the part of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in pro­vid­ing her re­spons­es,” Al­fon­so said. 

She de­scribed Ra­mute-Mo­han’s ad­mis­sion that the TTPS was seek­ing le­gal ad­vice be­fore tak­ing the de­ci­sion as as­ton­ish­ing. 

“It would be most as­tound­ing if, as you seem to be now aver­ring, that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice pro­ceed­ed to is­sue sub­stan­tive no­tices af­fect­ing a wide cross-sec­tion of the pub­lic, as well as var­i­ous in­ter­nal de­part­men­tal or­ders, with­out the ben­e­fit of le­gal ad­vice,” she said. 

Al­fon­so sug­gest­ed that it would be pru­dent and rea­son­able to sus­pend the move pend­ing the le­gal ad­vice sought. 

“It would in­deed be ex­tra­or­di­nary if the coun­try’s top law en­force­ment of­fi­cer were to be ac­tive­ly en­gaged in en­cour­ag­ing FUL hold­ers to take il­le­gal and wrong­ful steps in re­la­tion to the li­cens­ing regime which gov­erns the own­er­ship and use of their firearms,” Al­fon­so said. 

“I again call up­on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to act in a man­ner which would have the de­sir­able ef­fect of pre­serv­ing the in­tegri­ty of her of­fice,” she added.