MARK BAS­SANT

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) Chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad act­ed se­cret­ly on the mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and left all the oth­er mem­bers in the dark.

This star­tling ac­cu­sa­tion was made in the res­ig­na­tion let­ter writ­ten by for­mer PSC mem­ber Roger Kawals­ingh that was hand­ed to Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes short­ly af­ter 10 am yes­ter­day, ac­cord­ing to well-placed sources in the know as the PSC fi­as­co con­tin­ued to snow­ball.

In the let­ter, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Kawals­ingh not on­ly spoke about Seep­er­sad mak­ing a num­ber of “de­ci­sions uni­lat­er­al­ly and with­out con­sul­ta­tion or ap­proval of oth­er mem­bers of the com­mis­sion,” but al­so ad­dressed his blun­der of send­ing the email cor­re­spon­dence that was meant on­ly for PSC mem­bers’ eyes to for­mer top CoP Grif­fith.

The let­ter al­so re­vealed why Kawals­ingh did not re­sign ear­li­er, af­ter Court­ney Mc Nish re­signed last Wednes­day and Dr Su­san Craig James on Sat­ur­day. This has left em­bat­tled chair­man Seep­er­sad stand­ing alone as the con­tro­ver­sy rages on over whether the PSC fol­lowed prop­er process be­fore sus­pend­ing Grif­fith.

In Kawals­ingh’s let­ter to Weekes, he was frank in rais­ing sev­er­al con­cerns about Seep­er­sad. He point­ed out that Seep­er­sad failed to con­sult and get the req­ui­site ap­proval from the oth­er com­mis­sion mem­bers on sev­er­al is­sues.

Kawals­ingh wrote that they in­clud­ed: En­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with Mr Stan­ley John, re­tired judge, with­out the knowl­edge and ap­proval of the com­mis­sion, a de­ci­sion not to de­liv­er the mer­it list to the Pres­i­dent on Au­gust 12, fail­ing to abide by the de­ci­sion of the ma­jor­i­ty of com­mis­sion mem­bers to with­draw the sus­pen­sion let­ter and is­su­ing a let­ter of sus­pen­sion dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 17, 2021, to Grif­fith with­out the knowl­edge and ap­proval of the oth­er com­mis­sion mem­bers.

Ac­cord­ing to re­li­able sources, Kawals­ingh claimed in his let­ter that Seep­er­sad im­ple­ment­ed “at least two de­ci­sions pur­port­ed­ly on be­half of the Com­mis­sion with­out, to the best of my (Kawals­ingh) knowl­edge, the Com­mis­sion hav­ing the ben­e­fit of in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice.”

Kawals­ingh al­so made it abun­dant­ly clear that sev­er­al con­fi­den­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­change that took place be­tween PSC mem­bers and Seep­er­sad, that were pub­lished in var­i­ous news­pa­pers, did not em­anate from him.

How the im­broglio un­fold­ed

At least two sources who spoke to Guardian Me­dia gave an in­sight in­to what tran­spired fol­low­ing the fi­as­co that be­gan to un­rav­el over the last few weeks.

One of the sources in­di­cat­ed that the Au­gust 26 min­utes of the PSC meet­ing will show that the “chair­man asked all the mem­bers to agree to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion based on se­cret doc­u­ments and se­cret in­for­ma­tion she has got­ten. The ques­tion was asked how they were ex­pect­ed to agree to some­thing with­out see­ing doc­u­ments, be­cause there is a process,” the source ex­plained.

The mem­bers were not made aware of the in­for­mant or who had been re­spon­si­ble for the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to Seep­er­sad on the said day (Au­gust 12) when she vis­it­ed the Pres­i­dent’s House with the Or­der of Mer­it List.

The source con­tin­ued, “She came with three names for the in­ves­ti­ga­tor - Stan­ley John, Melville Baird and Li­onel Jones - and told them to choose one. How could they choose and they do not know what they are go­ing to do? She told them that they met the cri­te­ria, but the mem­bers in­sist­ed on see­ing the doc­u­ments. They asked how they are do­ing this? Do they have the pow­er to ap­point an in­ves­ti­ga­tor? And she said this is a mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise. But the mem­bers felt they need­ed to see the doc­u­ments and ad­vice on whether to in­ves­ti­gate,” the source ex­plained.

The fol­low­ing day (Au­gust 27), the PSC mem­bers again met via a phone con­fer­ence and were pro­vid­ed with two out of the three doc­u­ments that Seep­er­sad had spo­ken about be­fore, the source said.

“But in their view, there was noth­ing in those doc­u­ments that could not have been dis­closed be­fore. One was an un­signed let­ter and a note. The un­signed let­ter spoke about the process in­volved in is­su­ing Firearm User Li­cens­es (FUL’s). There were no al­le­ga­tions in that let­ter against Mr Grif­fith and it on­ly out­lined the process. The note did not say any­thing that was in­ter­est­ing. They said to her who­ev­er she met, the best thing for them to do would be to put in writ­ing what the com­plaint is, and then the com­mis­sion can look at it. No com­mis­sion­er op­posed to in­ves­ti­gat­ing the al­le­ga­tions. They (the PSC mem­bers) sent a draft let­ter to Seep­er­sad, re­quest­ing the com­plaint to be put in writ­ing and doc­u­ments sup­port­ing the com­plaint if any doc­u­ments were avail­able. It’s a process and they (the PSC mem­bers) are en­ti­tled to have that. But the let­ter was nev­er sent to the in­for­mant,” the source ex­plained.

An­oth­er source said three days lat­er, on Au­gust 30, Seep­er­sad called an­oth­er meet­ing to dis­cuss terms of ref­er­ence.

“They in­sist­ed that they should take their time on this mat­ter and not rush the process of ap­point­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tor, but they need­ed ad­vice first. But Seep­er­sad did not share the pop­u­lar con­sen­sus of the mem­bers, al­though they had is­sues with it. She lat­er told them she had an ap­point­ment with Mr John at the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, but rather it was where she of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed him. The mem­bers nev­er agreed to ap­point him, and it was that ap­par­ent­ly that lat­er trig­gered a let­ter to Seep­er­sad by one of the mem­bers (Kawals­ingh),” said the source.

The source said an­oth­er meet­ing was called fol­low­ing a let­ter writ­ten by Seep­er­sad con­cern­ing her stance on the John mat­ter.

“How could she think that the mem­bers could agree to this when there were still ques­tions to an­swer? Then she calls a vote ask­ing who is in favour? Dr Craig-James and Kawals­ingh said ‘no’ and Mc Nish and Seep­er­sad said ‘yes.’ And be­cause she is the chair­man, she had the cast­ing vote to break that dead­lock, which led to John’s ap­point­ment.”

The sec­ond source said the fi­nal straw that broke the camel’s back came on Sep­tem­ber 21.

“Mr Mc Nish had been ask­ing to see Mr John all along and three ques­tions were asked of Mr John. The first, of which, was there any ev­i­dence of in­ter­fer­ence at this time? Is there ev­i­dence of hin­drance at this time and was Mr Grif­fith co­op­er­at­ing. And the third ques­tion asked if it was fine to send Mr Grif­fith on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave out of an abun­dance of cau­tion and good in­dus­tri­al prac­tice and John seemed to agree to this, which sat­is­fied Mc­Nish’s ques­tions. John said Mr Grif­fith was not in­ter­fer­ing. But de­spite this, the chair­man did not budge and Mc­Nish re­signed the very said day.”

Kawals­ingh ex­plains his ac­tions

In the let­ter to the Pres­i­dent, Kawals­ingh ex­plic­it­ly stat­ed his rea­sons for not ten­der­ing his res­ig­na­tion in the midst of this firestorm of con­tro­ver­sy.

He said, “For sev­er­al days now, I have giv­en ma­ture and dis­pas­sion­ate con­sid­er­a­tion to re­sign­ing from the Com­mis­sion. I did not do so be­cause I was mind­ful that my res­ig­na­tion would leave the Com­mis­sion with­out a quo­rum to make de­ci­sions and give in­struc­tions rel­a­tive to the sev­er­al High Court ac­tions pend­ing.”

On the is­sue of the leaked email to for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith, which pur­port­ed­ly breached sec­tion 122A(1) (d) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which sub­sec­tion deals with the fail­ure of the Com­mis­sion­er to per­form his “du­ties in a time­ly man­ner,” Kawals­ingh ad­mit­ted he “mis­tak­en­ly sent the iden­ti­fied email to Mr Gary Grif­fith.”

He chalked it up to “hu­man er­ror,” and said it was re­gret­table.

In clos­ing, Kawals­ingh said up­on re­flec­tion, it was now ap­pro­pri­ate to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion and thanked the Pres­i­dent “for the priv­i­lege to serve this coun­try.”