Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is dou­bling down on his con­tro­ver­sial com­ments about fear­ful po­lice of­fi­cers hid­ing from crim­i­nals in po­lice sta­tions, but in­sists his words were tak­en out of con­text and mis­un­der­stood.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley sought to clar­i­fy that he nev­er in­tend­ed to of­fend the ded­i­cat­ed of­fi­cers who risk their lives to pro­tect law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

Dr Row­ley made the state­ment dur­ing Mon­day’s de­bate on the ra­tio­nale for the State of Emer­gency (SoE) and its sub­se­quent three-month ex­ten­sion, which was lat­er ap­proved.

As he at­tempt­ed to paint a pic­ture of T&T’s crime scourge and its ef­fects, he said: “It has come to my at­ten­tion, in some dis­tricts, in some in­stances, po­lice of­fi­cers, whose job it is to pro­tect us and se­cure us, in some dis­tricts at night, are so afraid of the crim­i­nals that they close the po­lice sta­tion door, turn off the light, and be in­side there hop­ing that the crim­i­nals don’t come at them.”

Those com­ments earned him a swift re­but­tal from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who de­fend­ed her of­fi­cers’ com­mit­ment and in­sist­ed that po­lice sta­tions are al­ways open.

“I wish to re­as­sure the pub­lic of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s ded­i­ca­tion and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to per­form­ing its polic­ing func­tions,” she as­sert­ed.

The re­marks al­so drew a stern re­buke from Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, and for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man Prof. Ramesh De­osaran. Both ex­pressed shock and alarm, call­ing the com­ments reck­less and an af­front to the morale of of­fi­cers. For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams al­so crit­i­cised Row­ley for mak­ing such state­ments pub­licly as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley yes­ter­day hit back at the “overblown crit­i­cisms,” as­sert­ing they were tak­en out of con­text and mis­un­der­stood. He al­so clar­i­fied that his com­ments high­light­ed a few in­stances of crim­i­nal brazen­ness to­ward po­lice of­fi­cers at po­lice sta­tions, which he de­scribed as fac­tu­al rather than gen­er­al crit­i­cism of the TTPS.

“The overblown crit­i­cisms are not fo­cused on what I ac­tu­al­ly said. One, it was a state­ment of fact in re­la­tion to a few in­stances of polic­ing. Are they deny­ing that?” Row­ley said in a What­sApp mes­sage

“Two, I was not so much crit­i­cis­ing po­lice of­fi­cers as I was point­ing out the ac­cel­er­at­ed brazen­ness of the crim­i­nals who are not pre­pared to re­spect the po­lice, or even the po­lice at the sta­tions. What is there to crit­i­cise?”

He ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that his con­sis­tent sup­port for law en­force­ment has been over­looked by crit­ics who have fo­cused dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on this spe­cif­ic state­ment

“I, on many oc­ca­sions, have raised and iden­ti­fied how we should ap­pre­ci­ate the brav­ery of po­lice­men and women who stand be­tween us and the crim­i­nals by putting their lives on the line on a dai­ly and night­ly ba­sis in de­fence of the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who de­pend on them to pro­tect us. How many times have I said that? I didn’t see any of the mouths sup­port­ing or ac­knowl­edg­ing what I said on many pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions.”

How­ev­er, in re­sponse to Row­ley’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of his re­marks, Williams yes­ter­day said while the Prime Min­is­ter may not have in­tend­ed to of­fend the TTPS, his com­ments were nonethe­less dam­ag­ing.

“I’m say­ing even if it is truth­ful, my con­cern had to do with the rev­e­la­tion of such in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main. It doesn’t add any­thing to im­prov­ing our sit­u­a­tion. The in­for­ma­tion placed in the pub­lic do­main doesn’t help us in any way as it re­lates to the po­lice ser­vice’s morale. It doesn’t help in any way in re­la­tion to ad­dress­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. It, in fact, en­cour­ages the crim­i­nal be­cause it gives them a feel­ing that ‘wait nah, we have the po­lice on the run. They hid­ing from us’.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the TTPS, Kei­th Scot­land, al­so agreed Row­ley’s com­ments were mis­un­der­stood. He al­so reaf­firmed the state’s con­fi­dence in and sup­port of the TTPS.

“We re­main com­mit­ted to the job and do­ing it to­geth­er. And I ask the po­lice of­fi­cers to judge us by our ac­tions and the re­sources placed in the po­lice force. And we’ll con­tin­ue to do that and they will have, un­equiv­o­cal­ly, the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port that is there for them,” Scot­land said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Scot­land said he vis­it­ed sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions across the cap­i­tal on Christ­mas Day to as­sess their needs and en­sure they were met. He em­pha­sised that Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to do­ing every­thing it can to sup­port law en­force­ment.​

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so weighed in yes­ter­day, call­ing Dr Row­ley’s com­ments “an in­sult and slur on the hard-work­ing of­fi­cers of the po­lice ser­vice.”

“This is typ­i­cal of Kei­th Row­ley...to make in­sult­ing and dis­re­spect­ful state­ments which are al­most al­ways dam­ag­ing and dan­ger­ous in every de­bate or plat­form speech he en­gages in and then come af­ter to de­ny his own words.”

Call­ing his lat­est com­ments a “bait and switch tech­nique,” she ac­cused Row­ley of tak­ing ad­van­tage of his par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

“This is the height of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly since it stands to com­pro­mise the cred­i­bil­i­ty and strength of the po­lice ser­vice, the se­cu­ri­ty of all cit­i­zens and our in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion by em­bold­en­ing crim­i­nals. He and his col­leagues should give up their po­lice pro­tec­tion de­tails if they be­lieve our of­fi­cers are afraid. Row­ley is the cow­ard of the coun­try, not our of­fi­cers.”

She al­so crit­i­cised Row­ley for giv­ing of­fi­cers four per cent wage hikes while al­lo­cat­ing $50 mil­lion for events at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre and agree­ing with a salary in­crease and pen­sion for high-pro­file politi­cians and oth­er state of­fi­cials.