HOLA, ERLA

SOMEBODY upstairs must really like Erla Harewood-Christopher.

Not just the Cabinet and its globetrotting leader.

Much higher!

There must have been a celestial involvement in the reappointment of the bungling police chief amid rampant murders, assaults, home invasions and other bloody crimes.

Erla acknowledged the unprecedented crisis more than a year ago.

“An evil has spread over the land,” the police boss said, “and those who are spiritually inclined must recognise that this is beyond the physical…”

She said the nation must “seek the intervention of that greater spirit…”

In other words, the authorities have meekly surrendered to gangsters, and only The One Above could tame the criminals. 

A spiritual power may have interceded on Erla’s behalf.

Because nothing else makes sense in having this chronically failed officer as the chief crime fighter in this beleaguered land.

Some say she was reappointed to lock up political opponents leading to the general election.

Others contend she will not rock the boat amid the planned introduction of controversial laws.

One bizarre piece of legislation calls for a ban on legal guns in designated areas, instead of targeting the spree of illegal weapons in the land.

Erla has the outlook of a compliant functionary, not a radical, driven crime sleuth.

National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds appeared to confirm that image in revealing that Harewood-Christopher got a good review from the Police Service Commission.

That commission and most other independent institutions are viewed as under the thumb of the authoritarian PNM Government.

These agencies no longer engage in objective decision-making.

There could be no sane explanation for Erla in the Police Commissioner’s office while armed thugs brutally murder innocent citizens in their homes, on the streets or in recreational areas.

Nothing justifies the retention of a commissioner under whose watch the detection rate is in paltry single digits, and guns, drugs and human traffickers have a wide open gateway.

There is no rationale for the absence of arrests during the occasional drug and gun raid or the police tardiness after major gory crimes.

There is no sensible reason for keeping Erla on the job as the nation races to anarchy, with gangsters electronically spying on lawmen and sealing off ghettos, and crimes at the doorsteps of police stations, . 

Except, as she said last year, “we need to invoke the help of that being to bring Trinidad and Tobago back to that place where we want it to be.”

Harewood-Christopher grimly told the nation that “the police could come up with whatever strategy but unless we enlist the help of God, we will be working in vain.”

But the Good Book also says the Almighty helps those who help themselves.

There is no evidence of the police service, under Erla’s watch, instituting proven strategies, using modern technology, applying intelligence measures and motivating officers.

Community policing is lacking, there is a continuous shortage of essential resources, and there are no effective linkages with regional law enforcement agencies.

Drug dens operate with impunity, the borders are wide open for illicit activities, and extortionists fearlessly terrorise businessmen.

The Government has not implemented any of the 15 announced measures following last year’s Caricom crime talks.

Erla is not likely to shake up the Government on these and other crime-fighting strategies.

She will dutifully occupy her office and occasionally invoke God to stamp out the criminal epidemic.

Hola, Erla.

Somebody really likes you.