Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has come in for strong crit­i­cism for at­tempt­ing to jus­ti­fy de­lays in clear­ing the sub­stan­tial back­log of firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tions.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad is­sued the crit­i­cism, yes­ter­day, as he up­held a case from a To­ba­go busi­ness­man over an al­most three-year de­lay in de­cid­ing his FUL ap­pli­ca­tion.

The out­come of the case and cor­re­spond­ing cri­tique came days af­ter High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo up­held an iden­ti­cal case from 17 FUL ap­pli­cants, last week.

Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo ren­dered a sim­i­lar de­ci­sion in a case brought by 33 ap­pli­cants in Jan­u­ary.

There are nu­mer­ous pend­ing cas­es of sim­i­lar de­lays.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that Hare­wood-Christo­pher claimed that it would be “un­fath­omable” to ex­pect her to spend time de­cid­ing out­stand­ing FUL ap­pli­ca­tions in­stead of ad­dress­ing vi­o­lent crime and man­ag­ing the hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources un­der her re­mit.

He not­ed that de­cid­ing on FUL ap­pli­ca­tions is a core func­tion of her job.

“It is sim­ply out­ra­geous that a sit­ting Com­mis­sion­er would elect to adopt a ‘Well I have plen­ty work to do’ stance in de­fence of the de­lay which has tran­spired in this case,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“To sug­gest that one core func­tion is more im­por­tant than an­oth­er is a clas­sic ‘cop-out’ stance which does not in­stil any con­fi­dence as to the of­fice hold­er’s ca­pac­i­ty or ca­pa­bil­i­ty to dis­charge the re­quired statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions,” he added.

Deal­ing with Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s claim that the de­lay was par­tial­ly due to over 25,000 pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tions, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad point­ed out that she failed to ad­duce ev­i­dence of the ef­fi­cien­cy of the ap­pli­ca­tion process.

He sug­gest­ed that the cur­rent sys­tem may be du­plic­i­tous as sim­i­lar in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed be­fore and af­ter an ap­pli­cant is is­sued with a pro­vi­sion­al FUL to al­low them to com­plete com­pe­ten­cy cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“Af­ter a thor­ough back­ground check is en­gaged, in­clu­sive of a med­ical and phys­i­o­log­i­cal as­sess­ment, it would be rea­son­able and ra­tio­nal to con­clude that the pro­vi­sion­al li­cence would en­able firearm train­ing and the gen­er­a­tion of a cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­tence and if no such cer­tifi­cate is is­sued, then a FUL can­not be giv­en,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tributed to the de­lay.

“The con­tin­ued use of the Covid pan­dem­ic as a crutch for the ab­sence of ef­fi­cien­cy post 2021 al­so lacks mer­it,” he said.

Re­fer­ring to two au­dits of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Firearms Unit, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said, “Com­ing out of the au­dits men­tioned, steps ought to have been tak­en to ad­dress iden­ti­fied ar­eas of con­cern in re­la­tion to FUL li­cences and prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tems to­geth­er with ad­e­quate man­pow­er should have been im­ple­ment­ed.”

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so sug­gest­ed that con­sid­er­a­tion of widen­ing the pool of FUL hold­ers may be re­quired be­cause of the coun­try’s high crime rate.

“The play­ing field should be lev­elled and the de­fence­less should be giv­en a ‘fight­ing’ chance,” he said.

“The abil­i­ty to have a law­ful­ly ob­tained firearm can no longer to be viewed as sta­tus sym­bol but must be seen as a tool to en­sure sur­vival,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the 35-year-old man, whose name was with­held due to po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, ap­plied for the FUL in No­vem­ber 2017 af­ter his home and busi­ness­es were bro­ken in­to.

In June 2021, he was grant­ed a pro­vi­sion­al FUL, which he used to en­rol in a firearm train­ing course and ob­tain a cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­tence.

He filed the case af­ter his pro­vi­sion­al FUL ex­pired and he did not re­ceive a de­ci­sion on his sub­stan­tive ap­pli­ca­tion.

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad gave Hare­wood-Christo­pher 28 days in which to de­cide on the FUL for the man.

The out­come of the case does not mean that the ap­pli­ca­tion would be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly grant­ed as Hare­wood-Christo­pher still has the sole dis­cre­tion to de­cide.

The case was cit­ed in a press re­lease from the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance, whose po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith served as po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­tween 2019 and 2021.

It claimed that Grif­fith sought to ad­dress the back­log by grant­i­ng over 6,000 FULs dur­ing his tenure.

It said, “This morn­ing’s High Court rul­ing which de­scribed com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s de­lay in is­su­ing a de­ci­sion on a FUL for an ap­pli­cant as “out­ra­geous”, sends a clear mes­sage to all that the po­si­tion adopt­ed by Gary Grif­fith, was right, it was jus­ti­fied, and it was with­in the law.”

The NTA al­so sup­port­ed Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s con­cerns over the two-phased in­ves­tiga­tive process be­ing em­ployed.

“In re­al­i­ty, all it takes af­ter one ob­tains a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence is for the Com­mis­sion­er to take one sec­ond out of her day to pro­vide her sig­na­ture, since all the work to en­sure that a per­son is fit for a FUL is done be­fore the pro­vi­sion­al ap­proval is grant­ed,” it said.

It al­so said that Grif­fith shared Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s view on the need to in­crease the num­ber of FUL hold­ers.

The busi­ness­man was rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Boy­er and Vani­ta Ram­roop, while De­niece Greenidge rep­re­sent­ed Hare­wood-Christo­pher.