Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, is ques­tion­ing why the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) did not have the in­tel­li­gence to warn that at­tor­ney Ran­dall Hec­tor’s life was in dan­ger.

His ques­tion came af­ter the as­sas­si­na­tion of Hec­tor on New Year’s eve while the coun­try was al­ready un­der a State of Emer­gency, a crime which Lal­la said high­lights a fail­ure of lead­er­ship with­in TTPS).

“This com­mis­sion­er has demon­strat­ed no ca­pac­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly use the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers grant­ed un­der the State of Emer­gency,” Lal­la de­clared in a post on his Face­book page on Wednes­day.

“Tues­day’s joint press con­fer­ence was em­bar­rass­ing—she (Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher) stum­bled through a pre­pared state­ment, fail­ing to in­spire any con­fi­dence that she can lead the fight against gang vi­o­lence.”

Hec­tor, a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor who was re­port­ed­ly in­volved in a case against a re­put­ed gang­ster, was gunned down af­ter he left the Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church on Stan­more Av­enue, Port-of-Spain. He was killed in front of his wife and chil­dren and oth­er mem­bers of the church who were near­by.

Hec­tor was al­so the le­gal ad­vis­er to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) which un­der­went a very pub­lic shake-up last year.

“If the State of Emer­gency is tru­ly tar­get­ing gangs, then their move­ments and com­mu­ni­ca­tions should be un­der con­stant sur­veil­lance. How, then, was there no in­tel­li­gence warn­ing that Mr Hec­tor’s life was in dan­ger?” Lal­la asked.

Ex­press­ing sym­pa­thy for Hec­tor’s fam­i­ly, Lal­la said, “It’s dif­fi­cult to ring in the new year with thoughts of this tragedy. My heart aches for his wife and chil­dren, who will car­ry this pain for the rest of their lives. My deep­est con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues.”

Lal­la urged the Gov­ern­ment to act de­ci­sive­ly, even if it meant ter­mi­nat­ing Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s con­tract.

“The safe­ty of our cit­i­zens must come be­fore the ego of any pub­lic of­fi­cer. The Gov­ern­ment must im­me­di­ate­ly as­sess whether changes are need­ed at the top of the TTPS, or we risk los­ing con­trol of gang­land mur­ders al­to­geth­er.”

He al­so called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the cur­rent state of af­fairs.

“This State of Emer­gency was his de­ci­sion. He must now lead from the front and en­sure that the TTPS has the lead­er­ship it needs to pro­tect the peo­ple.”

—Rhon­dor Dowlat