Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice-elect Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher starts her tenure with a de­cid­ed ad­van­tage over that re­ceived by the Pres­i­dent-elect Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo; she has been elect­ed with the bless­ings of the Op­po­si­tion.

It’s a plus in that she may not ini­tial­ly be loaded with po­lit­i­cal weight. In her first post-nom­i­na­tion in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Mrs Christo­pher-Hare­wood took the prin­ci­pled and pro­fes­sion­al po­si­tion that she will not be in­flu­enced in­to po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ing on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment.

Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the pre-elec­tion con­tention of Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, with Chief Whip Dr David Lee and Dr Roodall Mooni­lal ar­tic­u­lat­ing the view that with CoP Christo­pher-Hare­wood reach­ing re­tire­ment age of 60 in a few months, whether she gets re-ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion will be heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port, it’s of some con­cern that the UNC nev­er­the­less went ahead and sup­port­ed her for the po­si­tion.

The top CoP will, there­fore, have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make her claim to be­ing in­de­pen­dent in the first few months of her tenure be­liev­able.

Be­ing the first fe­male to have been elect­ed to the po­si­tion, al­so places quite a bit of bur­den on Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher. As point­ed out by the Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view­er, she is go­ing to be func­tion­ing in what is con­sid­ered a rough, tough man’s world of crime fight­ing. Nonethe­less, the CoP-elect has made her ma­jor tar­get in of­fice coun­ter­ing and dis­man­tling the grow­ing crim­i­nal gangs. With such a com­mit­ment, the CoP-elect has put her tenure on the line in two crit­i­cal ways.

First­ly, she will be per­form­ing her very heav­i­ly scru­ti­nised du­ties with­out suc­cumb­ing to any po­lit­i­cal pres­sures which may be di­rect­ed her way; and sec­ond­ly, she is go­ing af­ter the source of mur­ders and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties which, on oc­ca­sions, make this coun­try a ter­ri­fy­ing place for cit­i­zens.

In ad­di­tion to those two crit­i­cal promised re­spons­es to crime, which the coun­try has been bristling un­der for a cou­ple decades, there are in­vestors, lo­cal and for­eign, who pre­fer to start-up and pro­ceed with busi­ness in an econ­o­my in which they feel se­cure.

Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher, in her in­ter­view, al­so called at­ten­tion to her record. Her re­sume, dis­trib­uted pub­licly, makes her as aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied and with ad­vanced train­ing in po­lice work, as any pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­er.

How­ev­er, as has been point­ed out by a few com­men­ta­tors, her prac­ti­cal as­sign­ments have been heav­i­ly weight­ed in ad­min­is­tra­tive and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al du­ties, and not matched by crime-fight­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. And frankly, the lat­ter is where the ac­tion, so to speak, is ab­solute­ly re­quired at this time. Still, one el­e­ment of crime fight­ing must be putting in place a well-struc­tured or­gan­i­sa­tion and point­ed strat­e­gy to root-out crim­i­nal­i­ty.

There­fore, the CoP-elect has in her cred­its such a ca­pac­i­ty, which per­haps gives her an ad­van­tage over her pre­de­ces­sors. More­over, such a struc­tured ap­proach opens up pos­si­bil­i­ties not pre­vi­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed.

The T&T Guardian makes such an ob­ser­va­tion to place the new­ly mint­ed CoP-elect with a plus on the oth­er side of crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It’s a side which can be dri­ven by a fo­cus on po­lice in­tel­li­gence and not just brawn and lav­ish promis­es which have thus far been in­suf­fi­cient to counter wide­spread crim­i­nal­i­ty which places no val­ue on hu­man life. For the sake of the coun­try, this news­pa­per wish­es CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher well.