Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Dis­missed act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) James Philbert held the key to crack­ing the plot in which a top gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial has al­leged­ly been in­crim­i­nat­ed. A Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed Philbert was hound­ed out of of­fice; that on­ly days be­fore Philbert was sent pack­ing he met with the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial in­form­ing him that po­lice of­fi­cers were ex­pect­ed to quiz him in con­nec­tion with sev­er­al pieces of cor­re­spon­dence that re­sult­ed in for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment min­is­ters, Franklin Khan and Er­ic Williams be­ing charged with cor­rup­tion.

Philbert was due to re­sign from the Po­lice Ser­vice on June 30 but was giv­en a three-month ex­ten­sion by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) un­til a new CoP was ap­point­ed. In an abrupt and ques­tion­able move on Au­gust 26, how­ev­er, the PSC wrote to Philbert re­quest­ing that he im­me­di­ate­ly va­cate his of­fice. His sud­den de­par­ture raised ques­tions in many cir­cles, with many con­demn­ing the man­ner in which he was or­dered to leave his of­fice. No ex­pla­na­tion was giv­en ex­cept that of PSC chair­man Nizam Mo­hammed, who said "pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial is­sues" sur­round­ed his ter­mi­na­tion.

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, who was blanked the post in 2008, was tem­porar­i­ly ap­point­ed to act as CoP un­til Cana­di­an Dwayne Gibbs of­fi­cial­ly took up du­ties as this coun­try's top cop. "Why couldn't they al­low Philbert to stay on un­til the new CoP ar­rived and al­low Philbert to of­fi­cial­ly hand over to him? This is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter. It could have been any­one... Peo­ple were caused an­guish. Once there is ev­i­dence forth­com­ing we are go­ing to pur­sue this mat­ter all the way," a top po­lice source vowed.