Yes­ter­day’s T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia brief­ing served a more im­por­tant pur­pose than up­dat­ing the pub­lic on the ar­rest of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher. It was al­so an ef­fort to dis­play strength and sta­bil­i­ty by the ex­ec­u­tive of the law en­force­ment agency, amid the tur­moil of the top cop’s de­ten­tion.

The way Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Suzette Mar­tin, backed up by sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cers, faced the cam­eras, was in­tend­ed to demon­strate to the na­tion that the TTPS is firm­ly in con­trol and main­tain­ing law and or­der as the State of Emer­gency re­mains in force.

How­ev­er, it will take more than care­ful man­age­ment of in­for­ma­tion and pub­lic im­age to steer the TTPS, still strug­gling to re­gain the con­fi­dence of the pop­u­la­tion, through this lat­est cri­sis.

The dra­ma that has been un­fold­ing since Thurs­day morn­ing al­so in­cludes the ar­rest of for­mer Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) di­rec­tor Ma­jor Roger Best and the vol­un­tary sur­ren­der of firearms deal­er Luke Hadeed, who was ques­tioned at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day.

It all seems like a dra­mat­ic se­quel to events un­fold­ing since March last year, fol­low­ing the shake­up at the SSA, the coun­try’s main in­tel­li­gence agency. The com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor in both in­ci­dents is Ma­jor Best, who has been the sub­ject of months-long in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

These lat­est de­vel­op­ments are the most dra­mat­ic of the many twists and turns since the launch of the SSA probe.

Al­so, the events of the past two days can­not be de­tached from the pro­tract­ed probe in­to the is­su­ing of Firearm Users Li­cences (FUL) by the CoP’s of­fice—a mat­ter in which a for­mer CoP, Gary Grif­fith, has been em­broiled.

With the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volv­ing CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher at a sen­si­tive stage, ac­cord­ing to DCP Mar­tin, care must be tak­en to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of that process, as dif­fi­cult as it will be to con­trol the spec­u­la­tion that is al­ready rife, par­tic­u­lar­ly on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

The chal­lenge for the TTPS top brass is to min­imise the dam­age to that en­ti­ty’s al­ready bruised rep­u­ta­tion.

Neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions are in­evitable, giv­en the grav­i­ty of the al­le­ga­tions be­ing lev­elled against this coun­try’s first fe­male CoP.

Her ar­rest, al­most two years af­ter her his­toric ap­point­ment was unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved by Par­lia­ment, on­ly in­ten­si­fies the scruti­ny she has faced since then. Un­til now, how­ev­er, the fo­cus has been on her han­dling of the coun­try’s crime cri­sis.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the oth­er T&T top cop to be ar­rest­ed while in of­fice was Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, who seemed to be at the top of his crime-fight­ing game in 1986 when he was charged in con­nec­tion with drug smug­gling and the deaths of two men in a po­lice shootout.

Bur­roughs was even­tu­al­ly ac­quit­ted but with his ca­reer in sham­bles, he took ear­ly re­tire­ment from the TTPS and fad­ed in­to ob­scu­ri­ty.

How­ev­er, this is about much more than the like­ly fate of CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who re­mains in cus­tody.

This is a ma­jor blow to the al­ready tar­nished im­age of the TTPS, which has faced huge chal­lenges, in­clud­ing strug­gles to weed out rogue cops from its ranks and bring T&T’s crime wave un­der con­trol, in ad­di­tion to its many lead­er­ship is­sues.

With the of­fice of CoP cur­rent­ly un­oc­cu­pied, the polic­ing and man­age­r­i­al skills of the re­main­ing top brass will be test­ed, as they un­der­take dam­age con­trol and main­tain­ing sta­bil­i­ty with­in the ranks.

Hope­ful­ly, they can han­dle those dif­fi­cult tasks.