AMID widespread criticism and condemnation of her management of the police service, the Prime Minister has defended the tenure of Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher, saying that bashing the top cop does not help deal with the crime situation in the country.
Speaking on January 18 at the first post Cabinet press briefing for the year, at Whitehall, Dr Rowley said the commissioner needed support rather than ridicule. He said other people know about crime and criminality in the country so those who were part of the problem should keep quiet.
“(They) mightn’t be your favourite, mightn’t be his favourite, but the bottom line is that is the person who, for a period of time, is required to run the Police Service. I don’t think it helps to try to get yourself in the news every night by shouting down everything negative about the Commissioner of Police.
“She needs our support. If it was a ‘he,’ he needs our support because the situation is, that is the person who we’ve put there to do that job.”
[caption id="attachment_1057781" align="alignnone" width="692"] Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher. - File photo[/caption]
Amid a high murder rate and daily brazen acts of crime including robberies, shootings and home invasions, the police commissioner has been pilloried, especially on social media, especially after she was quoted as saying that prayers are needed to reduce crime and criminality.
Rowley also stressed Government would not be calling a state of emergency (SoE) to deal with the country’s worsening crime, not only because it was an ineffective measure in getting to the root cause of criminality, but because it would hurt the economy.
He made this statement in response to Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar saying, at the UNC's public crime talks on Monday at La Joya auditorium in St Joseph, that a state of emergency was needed to directly tackle crime.
Comparing the situation to that of 2011 when then prime minister Persad-Bissessar's People’s Partnership government declared an SoE to deal with the rising murder rate, Rowley said if government panics and calls an SoE, it would be an injustice to the country.
“There are a number of downsides to it, the least of which we would want to do nothing to disrupt the economic recovery (from the pandemic lockdown) that we have been working towards and hoping to experience going forward.”
He added that about 8,000 people were held during the 2011 SoE but most were released because of a lack of evidence.
“The end result of that was a fleet of lawsuits against the state by some of the very people who were thought to be the root of the criminal problem in the country.
"And in the absence of appropriate, justiciable evidence to prevail in the court, these people suddenly had a supply of State money to buy more guns. Because they kept winning the cases.”
Rowley said Trinidad and Tobago, like many other places in the world, is experiencing an upsurge of criminal activity. He said there were limitations to what the government c
