Geisha Kow­lessar

Cana­di­an Neal Park­er, who has been nom­i­nat­ed for the post of po­lice com­mis­sion­er, is now at the cen­tre of an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion. This stems from Park­er's re­port­ed in­volve­ment in the se­lec­tion process for the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice some two years ago. Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Am­bas­sador Christo­pher Thomas said yes­ter­day that the mat­ter was brought to his at­ten­tion, af­ter which a probe was launched.

Re­ports are that Park­er, a re­tired chief su­per­in­ten­dent of the Roy­al Mount­ed Po­lice of Cana­da, sat on the board as one of the se­lec­tors in 2008 to de­cide nom­i­nees for the post of top cop.

Penn State Jus­tice and Safe­ty In­sti­tute was con­tract­ed to con­duct the se­lec­tion process in 2008.

Con­cerns per­tain to whether Park­er was in­volved in a con­flict of in­ter­est, be­cause of in­side knowl­edge in his pri­or role as an as­ses­sor. Park­er now serves un­der con­tract as the deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er to the gov­ern­ment of An­tigua. Thomas said: "We are go­ing to look at that but we have sub­mit­ted our rec­om­men­da­tion." The rec­om­men­da­tion is for Park­er to be made Trinidad and To­ba­go's po­lice com­mis­sion­er. "I don't know whether it makes a dif­fer­ence, be­cause the as­sess­ment in this oc­ca­sion was dif­fer­ent from the last oc­ca­sion," Thomas said.

"But it does raise some ques­tions, " he ad­mit­ted. Asked if Park­er's se­lec­tion would be nul­li­fied if the re­port was con­firmed, Thomas said that that would be for Par­lia­ment to de­cide.

"Un­less they (Par­lia­ment) come back to us with some­thing else, but I don't want to spec­u­late on that," he said. Ac­cord­ing to the chair­man, out of 70 ap­pli­ca­tions for the job, there were on­ly four from lo­cals. They in­clud­ed new­ly-ap­point­ed act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, act­ing Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mau­rice Pig­gott and ACPs Fitzroy Fred­er­ick and Wayne Richard­son. None of the four were in the top five short­list­ed for the post of CoP, Thomas said. "Penn State sub­mit­ted a short list of nine can­di­dates for the of­fice of com­mis­sion­er of po­lice," he re­vealed. He fur­ther ex­plained: "The five high­est grad­ed can­di­dates did not in­clude can­di­dates from T&T." He said the com­mis­sion con­sid­ered the five, as­sessed them dif­fer­ent­ly from the firm as re­quired, and then nom­i­nat­ed Park­er.

The nom­i­na­tion was sent to the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic.

The names of two for­eign­ers were then placed on a mer­it list.

If Par­lia­ment re­jects Park­er, it has the op­tion of se­lect­ing from two oth­ers, one a US cit­i­zen and the oth­er Cana­di­an.

Penn State al­so sub­mit­ted a short­list of ten can­di­dates for the of­fices of deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er. Of the five high­est grad­ed can­di­dates, two were na­tion­als of T&T and one was a Cana­di­an. "The com­mis­sion as­sessed the five high­est grad­ed can­di­dates dif­fer­ent­ly and de­cid­ed that two lo­cal can­di­dates and one for­eign can­di­date should be nom­i­nat­ed to the Pres­i­dent for that post," Thomas said.

He in­di­cat­ed that Williams and Pig­gott were cho­sen for the posts of deputy com­mis­sion­er, along with Jack Ewats­ki, a Cana­di­an and for­mer chief of po­lice of the De­part­ment of Win­nipeg, Cana­da. Penn State was cho­sen to con­duct the se­lec­tion process, Thomas ex­plained, be­cause no lo­cal firm met the cri­te­ria. He said that "two or three firms" from this coun­try ap­plied to con­duct the as­sign­ment. "For a firm to have that ca­pa­bil­i­ty and that ex­pe­ri­ence, they must have some ex­per­tise," Thomas said.