Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says moves to force po­lice of­fi­cers to charge peo­ple dur­ing the state of emer­gency was a very dan­ger­ous prece­dent. Row­ley said Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs was "was quite pre­pared to play 'choir­girl' to this kind of de­vel­op­ment." He said the po­lice don't ap­pear to be op­er­at­ing un­der his di­rec­tion in the state of emer­gency. "Clear­ly it is not, and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is to be held re­spon­si­ble for sur­ren­der­ing his au­thor­i­ty to the politi­cians and for putting po­lice­men at risk," Row­ley said. He said the rep­u­ta­tion of the po­lice was be­ing de­stroyed. He said the Gov­ern­ment was han­dling the en­tire state of emer­gency bad­ly. "It is the epit­o­me of in­com­pe­tence," he stressed.

Row­ley said the po­lice were dis­re­spect­ing the of­fice of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion (DPP). Row­ley made the claim in an in­ter­view in the Red House yes­ter­day. He was com­ment­ing on Tues­day's pub­lic show­ing of al­leged CCTV record­ings of vi­o­lent at­tacks on Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain. The video showed peo­ple be­ing robbed in the cars and oth­ers be­ing mur­dered by res­i­dents of the street. The cas­es of 21 res­i­dents of Nel­son Street were dis­missed be­cause DPP Roger Gas­pard told the court he had in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute them. The video was pre­sent­ed by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mervyn Richard­son dur­ing a news con­fer­ence, af­ter a six-hour Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter on Tues­day.

"Since when the po­lice present ev­i­dence to the me­dia that they couldn't present in court?" Row­ley said. "What that po­lice of­fi­cer was do­ing was an af­front to the DPP." Row­ley said he want­ed to know what con­clu­sion should a cit­i­zen come to af­ter the po­lice showed the video in pub­lic af­ter the in­de­pen­dent DPP said there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute the 21 res­i­dents of Nel­son Street. He said the po­lice were be­ing tar­nished by the ex­e­cu­tion of the state of emer­gency. Row­ley said the ex­cuse that there was no wit­ness to give ev­i­dence in the mat­ters was a poor one. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and the po­lice said on Tues­day that the Nel­son Street res­i­dents were re­leased be­cause there were no wit­ness­es to give sup­port­ing ev­i­dence in the mat­ters.

"When this is all over, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice would have lost all cred­i­bil­i­ty," Row­ley said. He said how was the cit­i­zen to know the video footage was from Nel­son Street. "The Po­lice Ser­vice is be­ing used by this Gov­ern­ment to do what they thought was a PR bo­nan­za...It is turn­ing out to be a PR dis­as­ter and the quick­er they end this state of emer­gency and re­lease the state se­cu­ri­ty from all of this, the bet­ter for all of us," the Op­po­si­tion leader said. "I take se­ri­ous of­fence to gov­ern­ment spokesper­sons who say that if you ob­ject to these things you are un­pa­tri­ot­ic." He was al­so crit­i­cal of the high-pow­ered team of at­tor­neys, in­clud­ing Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dana See­ta­hal, SC, se­lect­ed to pros­e­cute peo­ple ar­rest­ed dur­ing the state of emer­gency un­der the An­ti-Gang Act.

"That to me was the most dan­ger­ous of all the de­vel­op­ments," he said. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the list of new ar­eas un­der cur­few from last night, Row­ley said he want­ed to know why Pe­nal/Siparia was not in­clud­ed in that list. "We still haven't touched Pe­nal/Debe, her con­stituen­cy (Siparia)..She (PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar) is play­ing favourites," he added.