The pop­u­la­tion must now be told the truth about the two high-pow­ered ri­fles brought in­to the coun­try that sparked the in­ves­ti­ga­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

At least were they brought in against the reg­u­la­tions of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), a non-com­bat or­gan­i­sa­tion? And if Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard found the al­le­ga­tions to be with­out suf­fi­cient sub­stance, in­ad­e­quate and or to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on a false hope of be­ing able to lead to a con­vic­tion, has the en­tire al­le­ga­tion been pure fab­ri­ca­tion?

Did some­one in high au­thor­i­ty set-up the said-to-be low­ly ranked po­lice of­fi­cer to go on an ad­ven­ture of their own mak­ing? Or maybe it is an ex­am­ple of poor po­lice in­ves­tiga­tive work in the ex­treme? It’s not every day that an of­fi­cer or of­fi­cers ju­nior to the CoP take it up­on them­selves to ar­rest and ques­tion for three days the top law en­force­ment of­fi­cer in the land. This, there­fore, can­not be placed as the do­ing of some in­com­pe­tent of­fi­cer on the beat.

This crashed ar­rest and ques­tion­ing has fur­ther dam­aged the al­ready tar­nished rep­u­ta­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, as a place where the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice can be sus­pect­ed of en­gag­ing in ac­tiv­i­ty which en­dan­gers the cit­i­zens of the coun­try. Not too in­ci­den­tal­ly, can some­one say some­thing about the where­abouts of the two ri­fles in ques­tion. Have they been re­trieved from the SSA and are now in safe keep­ing of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice?

This mat­ter is far from over. If there are fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions to be done on the CoP, as was sug­gest­ed by lead of­fi­cer DCP Suzette Mar­tin yes­ter­day, can Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­sume her po­si­tion? Will she do so with this un­re­solved mat­ter bear­ing down on her abil­i­ty to func­tion? And what of those very se­nior of­fi­cers who sup­port­ed this probe, de­ten­tion and ques­tion­ing of the Com­mis­sion­er – are they to be now ques­tioned?

Was it spite-work against Hare­wood-Christo­pher? Was there no one in the po­lice hi­er­ar­chy who could have looked at what­ev­er ev­i­dence was be­ing gath­ered and con­clud­ed, like the DPP, that it was in­suf­fi­cient to ar­rest and in­ves­ti­gate the CoP?

Of in­ter­est, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, who can nev­er be ac­cused of not hav­ing a view on such mat­ters, has been qui­et. Not so Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, al­so chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, who ad­mit­ted to be­ing "a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed” at the sit­u­a­tion. He how­ev­er not­ed that “a per­son is in­no­cent un­til proven guilty, and due process is guar­an­teed.”

The re­al­i­ty, though, is that the ar­rest and ques­tion­ing of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has re­sult­ed in cast­ing a se­vere stain not mere­ly against Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher and her fu­ture ca­reer, but against T&T. More so, if se­nior coun­sel Pamela El­der, a fright­en­ing­ly suc­cess­ful de­fend­er of ac­cused per­sons, is cor­rect in her claim that “it was pel­lu­cid­ly clear that there was not one drop of ev­i­dence against the Com­mis­sion­er.”

On the oth­er side of this set of se­ri­ous­ly con­cern­ing ac­tions by the TTPS, the in­de­pen­dence of DPP Gas­pard is to be not­ed. He act­ed notwith­stand­ing that his view was against the lead­ers of the po­lice ser­vice.