Mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) are re­port­ed­ly "baf­fled by the bel­liger­ence" of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in the mat­ter of the ab­sence of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki from the coun­try, a well-placed source has said. PSC chair­man Dr Ramesh De­osaran was said to be in meet­ings yes­ter­day and could not be reached for com­ment on the mat­ter; but a source with knowl­edge of the mat­ter said PSC mem­bers were of the view that they "res­cued" the sit­u­a­tion by the ac­tions they took on Tues­day. The PSC had raised con­cerns about the ab­sence of Gibbs and Ewats­ki from the coun­try and the fail­ure to fol­low prop­er pro­ce­dures and pro­to­cols in the ap­point­ment of Stephen Williams as act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

The com­mis­sion al­so retroac­tive­ly ap­point­ed Williams to act as CoP via a let­ter is­sued on Tues­day. The AG, how­ev­er, was crit­i­cal of the PSC's de­ci­sion to is­sue a press re­lease ques­tion­ing the ab­sence of the two top cops in the cli­mate of a state of emer­gency. AG Ram­lo­gan in­sist­ed yes­ter­day that there was "no is­sue le­gal or oth­er­wise" and the en­tire mat­ter was "a storm in a teacup." He called on the PSC to ex­plain it­self and ques­tioned their mo­tives for is­su­ing a press re­lease that "would cause the kind of con­fu­sion in the minds of the pop­u­la­tion on the va­lid­i­ty of the cur­few or­der signed by the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams." Ac­cord­ing to the PSC source, the com­mis­sion­ers got a let­ter in­di­cat­ing that Gibbs would be out of the coun­try and that Williams would act as CoP in his ab­sence last Fri­day, on the very day that Gibbs left the coun­try.

The mat­ter was put on the agen­da for the PSC's meet­ing the fol­low­ing Tues­day. "The PSC knew noth­ing about a state of emer­gency at that time and de­cid­ed they would de­ter­mine at their meet­ing whether the let­ter from Gibbs came to them prop­er­ly. "It was felt that they should have been giv­en a day or two no­tice, rather than the same day no­ti­fi­ca­tion," the source said. The mem­bers of the PSC felt they had been placed in a dilem­ma with the mat­ter since they had to de­ter­mine whether they could make Williams' ap­point­ment retroac­tive. They were re­port­ed­ly con­cerned about the way in which the mat­ter was pre­sent­ed to them since they were re­quired to act in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion "which does not op­er­ate so," the source told the T&T Guardian.

To date, the source said, the PSC had re­ceived no ex­pla­na­tion of Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ewats­ki's ab­sence from the coun­try. He is re­port­ed­ly abroad on va­ca­tion. PSC mem­bers re­port­ed­ly is­sued their strong­ly-word­ed re­lease on the mat­ter be­cause there were "ar­eas of grave con­cern" and they want­ed to alert the Gov­ern­ment and cau­tion them to be more vig­i­lant in the fu­ture.