"We are back," re­tired po­lice in­spec­tor Mervyn Cord­ner de­clared to the T&T Guardian in No­vem­ber 2008. The event was a get-to­geth­er of mem­bers of the 1980's era Fly­ing Squad, and these of­fi­cers were ap­palled at the state of T&T crime and want­ed to change things.Mr Cord­ner sup­port­ed CoP James Philbert but was dis­mis­sive of the im­port­ed po­lice as­sets then guid­ing spe­cial­ist po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

"These peo­ple can­not go in­to Laven­tille or Bagatelle in Diego Mar­tin and get any­thing," he ar­gued. Mr Philbert ig­nored the of­fer, and the no­tion of an Fly­ing Squad went to roost un­til Mr Cord­ner salut­ed in Ju­ly 2012, the ap­point­ment of Jack Warn­er as min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.No doubt Mr Cord­ner was heart­ened to hear among the first words from Mr Warn­er's lips af­ter the an­nounce­ment of his new post, of plans to re­con­sti­tute the Fly­ing Squad.

Not­ing that he had of­fered a crime plan to for­mer CoP Dwayne Gibbs, Mr Cord­ner not­ed that the new se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter "needs peo­ple around him who can build that foun­da­tion."In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary Mervyn Cord­ner reap­peared to an­nounce that he had been run­ning a covert in­tel­li­gence unit, a re­con­sti­tut­ed Fly­ing Squad, for the last six months.

Ac­cord­ing to Mr Cord­ner, a bud­get of $180 mil­lion had been re­quest­ed to run the op­er­a­tion for two years, but no mon­ey ever came.The squad, with a com­ple­ment of 75 of­fi­cers, col­lapsed for a lack of fund­ing and this pub­lic state­ment was meant to win sup­port for the work that had been done so far. That wasn't what hap­pened.The next day, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er de­nied hav­ing any part in a res­ur­rect­ed Fly­ing Squad.

He was joined in em­phat­ic de­nials by Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams who promised an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what he hoped was not a "vig­i­lante unit."MSJ leader David Ab­du­lah called on the min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty to re­sign if he had a hand in the cre­ation of a rogue unit of re­tired po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in unau­tho­rised in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing op­er­a­tions.

This star­tling ad­ven­ture stands in sharp re­lief with the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit (Sautt) which paid out its last sev­er­ance pack­ages to 78 work­ers in the same week that Mr Cord­ner was look­ing for his fund­ing. Sautt, at least, was a project that the pub­lic was aware of, with a spe­cif­ic man­date for its op­er­a­tions. Sautt was nev­er for­mal­ly recog­nised as part of this coun­try's crime re­sponse, but every­one was aware of it and what it was sup­posed to do.

No­body, save for Mr Cord­ner, seems will­ing to ac­knowl­edge that 75 peo­ple were gath­ered to do a job, ap­par­ent­ly giv­en space in which to do it, were not paid and no­body is ap­par­ent­ly re­spon­si­ble, de­spite clear ev­i­dence that the group had en­ablers among per­sons in au­thor­i­ty.This whole sit­u­a­tion stinks. The coun­try should be right­ful­ly con­cerned about Mr Cord­ner's group, who made it pos­si­ble and what, ex­act­ly, it's been up to over the last few months.

Those an­swers aren't avail­able and that's a sit­u­a­tion that's sim­ply un­ten­able.