Ali­cia Llanos

Se­nior British crime in­ves­ti­ga­tors at­tached to the elite Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt) cur­rent­ly earn a salary in ex­cess of $1.4 mil­lion a year each. The salary of those of­fi­cers are in ex­cess of what T&T's new Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and his Cana­di­an coun­ter­part Jack Ewats­ki will earn. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy con­firmed this dur­ing yes­ter­day's post- Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence held at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair Av­enue.

Sandy said the se­nior ex­ec­u­tives at Sautt earned an ex­cess of $1,440,000 a year, where­as Gibbs would be earn­ing $1,305,850 a year. Sandy said so in re­sponse to ques­tions about the re­cent crit­i­cisms re­gard­ing the salary which Gibbs would re­ceive when he as­sumed po­si­tion as T&T's top cop in Sep­tem­ber. The Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said se­nior mem­bers of Sautt who were for­mer­ly hired by the Lon­don Po­lice Force, earned $120,000 per month, along with a $26,000 al­lowance for hous­ing. These fig­ures to­talled $1,440,000 per year salary and a $312,000 per year hous­ing al­lowance.

Sandy said all salaries for mem­bers of Sautt, Gibbs and Ewats­ki, who would be paid $1.23 mil­lion per year, were set by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion. In the cas­es of Gibbs and Ewats­ki, Sandy said the salaries were "re­lat­ed to those of­fered in the US and Cana­da to se­nior for­eign ex­ec­u­tives." When asked as to whether a lo­cal CoP would be paid the same, Sandy said the salary would be a lit­tle less. He ex­plained that the dis­par­i­ty in­clud­ed an "ex­pat al­lowance" which was nor­mal­ly paid to any for­eign ex­ec­u­tive who had to move his fam­i­ly to an­oth­er coun­try.

Sandy said Gibbs and Ewats­ki were on a three-year con­tract.

But he as­sured mem­bers of the pub­lic: "If pos­i­tive re­sults are not forth­com­ing as ex­pect­ed, op­tions are avail­able for ter­mi­na­tion." Sandy said the per­for­mances of both Gibbs and Ewats­ki would be as­sessed and re­viewed by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He said both Gibbs and Ewats­ki were ex­pect­ed to as­sume du­ty next month. Sandy said he ex­pect­ed Gibbs and Ewats­ki would en­hance the crime-fight­ing tech­niques of the Po­lice Ser­vice. He said the "hard-work­ing po­lice of­fi­cers will be ex­posed to new sys­tems and tech­nolo­gies."

Re­spond­ing to crit­i­cisms that a lo­cal of­fi­cer should have been se­lect­ed for post of po­lice com­mis­sion­er, Sandy said the screen­ing process for a for­eign CoP was an ini­tia­tive of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, which cost the state mil­lions of dol­lars. On Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with se­nior of­fi­cers and the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and as­sured of­fi­cers that their salaries would be re­viewed.

–Re­port­ing by Ali­cia Llanos