Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Back off! This is the strong mes­sage be­ing sent by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard to "of­fice hold­ers" re­gard­ing the ar­rest of cit­i­zens un­der the state of emer­gency. Warn­ing that he would "con­tin­ue to jeal­ous­ly guard his of­fice at all cost," Gas­pard, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian, said his of­fice would con­tin­ue to act in­de­pen­dent­ly. On the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's de­ci­sion to re­tain a bat­tery of at­tor­neys to as­sist with the pros­e­cu­tion of mat­ters un­der the state of emer­gency, Gas­pard said: "No oth­er of­fice hold­er would be al­lowed to choose any at­tor­ney for me for the pros­e­cu­tion of any mat­ter; that choice re­mains ex­clu­sive­ly mine." On the is­sue of the per­cep­tion of a war be­tween the AG and the DPP, Gas­pard said: "I know of no war be­tween the AG and my­self. There are no win­ners in war. I humbly pre­fer sim­ply to con­tin­ue to do my work sober­ly so as to pro­tect and ad­vance the pub­lic's in­ter­est."

Dis­miss­ing claims that the re­lease of 21 Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain res­i­dents was due to wit­ness­es be­ing afraid to tes­ti­fy, Gas­pard said no such state­ments ex­ist­ed on the file pe­rused by him. "The file that I would have pe­rused in­volv­ing the 21 men who were sub­se­quent­ly re­leased con­tained no ev­i­dence of gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty since the com­ing in­to force of the An­ti Gang Act. "Fur­ther, I would al­so have seen two sets of CCTV footage which per­tained to in­ci­dents pri­or to the procla­ma­tion of the Act. Those in­ci­dents could not as­sist me. "I am not aware of the ex­is­tence of any such state­ments. Hav­ing pe­rused the file I am not aware that the rea­son why the State could not go for­ward with the mat­ters was be­cause of wit­ness­es be­ing afraid to tes­ti­fy.

The DPP added: "When I looked at the file I did not see any state­ment from any wit­ness who sub­se­quent­ly be­came afraid to give ev­i­dence; the file has noth­ing about any wit­ness­es be­ing afraid to give ev­i­dence. "The rea­son why the State could not go for­ward was be­cause of the sheer lack of ev­i­dence. I do not know if they have knowl­edge that I do not have," an out­spo­ken Gas­pard said. Po­lice sources said the file con­tained state­ments from the po­lice com­plainant, an An­ti Gang ex­pert, and the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) Po­lice Unit-a de­part­ment re­spon­si­ble for pro­fil­ing peo­ple de­tainees.

Point­ing out that the An­ti Gang Act 2011 came in­to ef­fect on Au­gust 15, Gas­pard said peo­ple with pend­ing gang-re­lat­ed mat­ters could not be pros­e­cut­ed for of­fences pri­or to the Act be­ing im­ple­ment­ed. The time­frame of the CCTV footage re­leased last week was in Jan­u­ary and March-ap­prox­i­mate­ly five months be­fore the Act was passed. "I saw the video footage be­fore I made my de­ci­sion. It would have been un­fair to al­low those per­sons to re­main in cus­tody in those cir­cum­stances. It would have amount­ed to a com­plete and re­gret­table ab­di­ca­tion of my role as DPP," Gas­pard said.

FLASH­BACK

It was on­ly last week, sec­re­tary of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Sgt Michael Seales claimed that the as­so­ci­a­tion re­ceived com­plaints from its mem­bers that "ques­tion­able in­struc­tions" were giv­en by se­nior of­fi­cers re­gard­ing de­ten­tion. De­scrib­ing the ques­tion­able in­struc­tions as "un­ac­cept­able", Seales said: "Mem­bers said they were giv­en in­struc­tions to de­tain and the ev­i­dence would come lat­er."