Sus­pend­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is urg­ing her re­place­ment, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, to be prin­ci­pled in ex­e­cut­ing his du­ties and to al­ways act with in­tegri­ty.

In a short mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia last evening—her first pub­lic com­ment since she was ar­rest­ed and sub­se­quent­ly re­leased amid an on­go­ing probe in­to the pro­cure­ment of two sniper riles for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency —Hare­wood-Christo­pher thanked Ben­jamin for his sup­port as a mem­ber of her ex­ec­u­tive team dur­ing her stint as the top cop.

Wish­ing him “very well dur­ing his tenure,” she said, “My on­ly ad­vice to him would be to be prin­ci­pled in the dis­charge of his func­tions and to have the courage to act with in­tegri­ty and in ac­cor­dance with his con­vic­tions of what is right and wrong.”

She added, “As a dis­cern­ing Chris­t­ian, he would know that that will not al­ways earn him the favour of man, but at least he will have the favour of God ... Which is what re­al­ly mat­ters.”

She en­dorsed Ben­jamin as a po­lice of­fi­cer with very many years ex­pe­ri­ence, ad­mit­ting, “As a deputy com­mis­sion­er, he would have served in very close prox­im­i­ty to the of­fice of the com­mis­sion­er so there is very lit­tle ad­vice he would need in terms of polic­ing.”

Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, came hours af­ter Ben­jamin urged the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to hold the sus­pend­ed com­mis­sion­er in high es­teem, and not­ed that “our prayers are with her.”

Speak­ing af­ter he and new­ly ap­point­ed Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Curt Si­mon col­lect­ed their ap­point­ment let­ters at the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) Sec­re­tari­at at Pasea, Tu­na­puna, Ben­jamin con­firmed he had had a con­ver­sa­tion with Hare­wood-Christo­pher fol­low­ing the ap­proval of his act­ing ap­point­ment by the Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day.

He de­scribed the con­ver­sa­tion as “pleas­ant and cor­dial,” not­ing the two shared a mu­tu­al­ly re­spect­ful re­la­tion­ship.

Ben­jamin praised Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tri­bu­tion to build­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and urged peo­ple to con­tin­ue to hold her in high es­teem.

Re­gard­ing the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he said, “Our prayers con­tin­ue to be with her even through the whole sit­u­a­tion.”

De­spite his el­e­va­tion to the post she once held and notwith­stand­ing the con­tro­ver­sy un­fold­ing with­in the TTPS, Ben­jamin said, “I stand ready and will­ing to serve my or­gan­i­sa­tion and to re­al­ly start off bring­ing that lev­el of heal­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

He ad­mit­ted, “We have gone through a lot at this stage.”

Both he and Si­mon as­sured they were up to the task ahead.

Hold­ing fast to his faith, Ben­jamin thanked God.

He said, “First of all, we would like to thank almighty God be­cause with­out him, it is not pos­si­ble.”

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the work ahead in re­build­ing and restor­ing the TTPS’ shred­ded rep­u­ta­tion amidst in­tense pub­lic scruti­ny, Ben­jamin ac­knowl­edged it would not be easy.

To all the men and women un­der his com­mand, Ben­jamin said, “We want to see how we can help our of­fi­cers and build their morale in the midst of the chal­lenges we face.”

To be­gin this, he said they are hop­ing to get their se­nior of­fi­cers to work with them.

He praised of­fi­cers for their hard work and con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to the job, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

“We want to en­sure we go out there and look at ways in which we can re­al­ly as­sist in terms of fa­cil­i­ties. We want to en­sure, in terms of train­ing and equip­ment, all these things must be a pri­or­i­ty,” he said.

Dur­ing this SoE, Ben­jamin added, “We want to en­sure we have a ro­bust strat­e­gy to re­duce crime and that must be a pri­or­i­ty at this time. There­fore, we are go­ing to be look­ing at those strate­gies and en­sur­ing that even af­ter the SoE, that we have some­thing sus­tain­able that T&T can once again be safe again.”

Asked what his first or­der of busi­ness would be, the act­ing CoP re­vealed, “It would be to sit down with the top ex­ec­u­tive and we are go­ing to be look­ing at our strate­gies.”

He said it was his goal to en­sure that T&T is proud of the TTPS at the end of this year.

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of the act­ing CoP, DCP Si­mon re­it­er­at­ed the aim is to re­build trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS.

“We are not go­ing to say that it’s an easy job but I think it’s a task that we are up to. The ex­ec­u­tive of the po­lice ser­vice are ready and rar­ing to run with this new lead­er­ship, whether it be tem­po­rary or oth­er­wise. but we are ready to run with it and take this po­lice ser­vice to where we think it should be head­ed in this 21st cen­tu­ry.”