Suzanne Shep­pard

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki left the coun­try with­out prop­er leave of ab­sences. A strong­ly word­ed three-page re­lease from the PSC's Pub­lic Ed­u­ca­tion Unit point­ed out that both men left the coun­try with­out fol­low­ing es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures and pro­to­cols. "Nei­ther of these two gen­tle­men have sought to no­ti­fy us prop­er­ly of their ab­sences," the PSC said. The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that Gibbs is back in the coun­try but Ewats­ki is still abroad on pri­vate busi­ness. The com­mis­sion said while Gibbs was out of the coun­try for less than sev­en days, "ques­tions may arise as to the ab­sence" of Ewats­ki. Ac­cord­ing to the PSC, the ser­vices of the Com­mis­sion­er or Deputy Com­mis­sion­er may be ter­mi­nat­ed "where the of­fi­cer is ab­sent for sev­en con­sec­u­tive days, dur­ing which he has failed to no­ti­fy the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion of the cause of his ab­sence, whether he holds a per­ma­nent, tem­po­rary, or con­trac­tu­al ap­point­ment."

The com­mis­sion ex­pressed con­cern that CoP Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Ewats­ki have been "con­spic­u­ous­ly ab­sent from the fore­front of the cur­rent arrange­ments in the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to the cur­rent state of emer­gency and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing polic­ing arrange­ments." The PSC re­lease added: "The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has been pro­vid­ed with no for­ward­ing ad­dress for these two gen­tle­men, nor any over­seas con­tact tele­phone num­bers for them. "In their ab­sence, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams has been at the lead for these arrange­ments in what is in ef­fect a de­plet­ed Po­lice Ser­vice ex­ec­u­tive." The PSC point­ed out that while Williams has been re­ferred to in me­dia re­ports as the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, he was not of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed to act in that ca­pac­i­ty dur­ing Gibbs' ab­sence from the coun­try.

As a re­sult, "there can be se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions and con­se­quences" be­cause Le­gal No­tice No 164 The Emer­gency Pow­ers Cur­few Or­der 2011 was is­sued un­der the hand of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Williams pur­port­ing to be the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. The PSC al­so said it had not heard from Gibbs or Ewats­ki about the plans and ob­jec­tives of the Po­lice Ser­vice dur­ing the state of emer­gency which was de­scribed as "the most sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tive in this coun­try in years." The re­lease con­tin­ued: "The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is mind­ful of the tremen­dous sac­ri­fice and in­con­ve­nience to be en­dured by the gen­er­al pub­lic dur­ing this time and wish­es to know the spe­cif­ic goals and ob­jec­tives of the Po­lice Ser­vice dur­ing this time so as to as­sist in the as­sess­ments and ap­praisals of both Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Ewats­ki."

Ac­cord­ing to the PSC, they will be seek­ing to find out whether con­tin­gen­cies and safe­guards will be put in place to en­sure there are no breach­es of the rights of mem­bers of the pub­lic dur­ing the state of emer­gency.

The com­mis­sion un­der­scored the im­por­tance of get­ting the pub­lic's sup­port, trust and con­fi­dence that "ex­er­cis­es will be car­ried out in a fair, bal­anced and hu­mane man­ner, with the fullest re­spect for the dig­ni­ty of per­sons and their prop­er­ty and de­void of ex­cess­es and abus­es of pow­er." The PSC said both men will be giv­en the fullest op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard and they will be asked to "ex­plain and ac­count for their ab­sences." In ad­di­tion, the PSC said it was "a mat­ter of grave con­cern" that Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs was de­tained for some hours in Brazil up­on en­ter­ing that coun­try to at­tend a con­fer­ence. "We, as yet, have heard noth­ing from Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs in re­la­tion to this in­ci­dent, which by me­dia re­ports, ap­pears to be a tremen­dous em­bar­rass­ment, not on­ly to the Po­lice Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go and by ex­ten­sion the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, but al­so to the en­tire na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go as it ap­pears that his de­ten­tion may have been the re­sult of Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs not hav­ing a visa for such en­try in­to Brazil." The PSC said it in­tends to com­plete its ap­praisal of Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Ewats­ki in the near fu­ture and will re­port to the pub­lic ac­cord­ing­ly.