Don’t stop with Tobago, Erla

DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin’s view that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has crime un­der con­trol at a Sep­tem­ber 6 news con­fer­ence, shocked many and raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about whether the ser­vice had lost touch with the views of the ground.

Al­most two weeks lat­er, it’s clear the TTPS hi­er­ar­chy wish­es to con­tin­ue push­ing the nar­ra­tive that things are not as bad as the pub­lic per­ceives them to be, as, on Mon­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher sug­gest­ed the po­lice have been mak­ing steady gains in com­bat­ting se­ri­ous crime. 

When it comes to some as­pects of crime, this may very well be so, but as the TTPS lead­er­ship ought to know, pub­lic per­cep­tion of the crime sit­u­a­tion is pri­mar­i­ly hinged on the rate of homi­cides.

Need­less to say, that is where the TTPS scores low­est at the mo­ment, which makes its at­tempts to project it­self as win­ning this crime fight as noth­ing short of fu­tile ex­cus­es to cov­er up a bad wound.

Where homi­cides are con­cerned, To­ba­go takes on a big­ger spot­light giv­en that the is­land, which had long ap­peared to be im­mune from the scourge of se­ri­ous crimes that oc­cur in Trinidad, has seen an ex­po­nen­tial rise from what was a record 13 mur­ders in all of 2023, to a dis­as­trous 22 with­in the ninth month of this year.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the fo­cus has been placed on the abil­i­ty of po­lice in To­ba­go to crack down on the crime sit­u­a­tion.

The com­mis­sion­er’s at­tempt to man­age this cri­sis took sev­er­al forms, from an­nounc­ing the trans­fer of of­fi­cers from Trinidad to To­ba­go to re­duce the im­pact of fa­mil­iar­i­ty be­tween res­i­dents and To­ba­go-born of­fi­cers, to vis­it­ing the is­land her­self with re­cent­ly-ap­point­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Kei­th Scot­land, to get a bet­ter feel of the sit­u­a­tion on the ground.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil al­so met in To­ba­go dur­ing the last two months.

De­spite this, the mur­der rate con­tin­ued to rise be­fore the de­ci­sion was tak­en to re­place To­ba­go Di­vi­sion heads, ACP Col­lis Hazel and Snr Supt Rod­hill Kirk, with Trinidad-based of­fi­cers, act­ing ACP Os­wain Subero and Snr Supt Earl Elie.

With­out any word from the TTPS on the rea­sons for the change at this time, cit­i­zens can on­ly de­duce that those at the helm lost faith in To­ba­go’s two most se­nior of­fi­cers to make a se­ri­ous im­pact any­time soon.

It’s been some time since we have seen the TTPS hi­er­ar­chy take ac­tion at such a high lev­el, and com­ing so soon af­ter Min­is­ter Scot­land was giv­en the TTPS as his brief, he might very well be the one cred­it­ed for this de­ci­sion. 

For all its worth, the TTPS has sent a pow­er­ful mes­sage that it is pre­pared to make top-lev­el changes based on the per­for­mances of its lead­ers.

The ques­tion now is whether or not Min­is­ters Fitzger­ald Hinds and Scot­land, as well as Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher, are will­ing to make oth­er ma­jor changes in Trinidad, af­ter as­sess­ing the per­for­mances of heads of di­vi­sions in re­la­tion to homi­cides and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes. 

If the nar­ra­tive con­tin­ues to be that things are get­ting bet­ter, con­trary to pub­lic per­cep­tion, then we’d ex­pect lit­tle by way of strate­gic ad­min­is­tra­tive changes.

The mes­sage would on­ly be that while there was an ur­gent need for a change in the po­lice lead­er­ship of To­ba­go, those lead­ing the crime fight in Trinidad have things ful­ly un­der con­trol.