Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) po­lit­i­cal leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan wants Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith to clear the air on the $1bil­lion dis­burse­ment of funds to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

In a me­dia re­lease, she said “The con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Gary Grif­fith with re­spect to the re­lease of TT $1bil­lion to the Po­lice Ser­vice of T&T is in­deed cause for alarm.

“As a mat­ter of ur­gent pub­lic im­por­tance, the Min­is­ters of Fi­nance and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Stu­art Young and the CoP must im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide the nec­es­sary clar­i­fi­ca­tions in the pub­lic in­ter­est as to not on­ly how these pub­lic funds were utilised, but if they were dis­bursed in ac­cor­dance with the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for the cur­rent fis­cal year.

“Of great con­cern is the state­ment by the CoP that the ma­jor­i­ty of the TT$20 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for the im­prove­ment and trans­for­ma­tion of the po­lice ser­vice was used to pay out­stand­ing bills for 2018/2019 and 2017/2018 fis­cal years.”

She said it was im­por­tant to note that mod­erni­sa­tion of the po­lice ser­vice was ur­gent­ly need­ed to re-en­gi­neer process­es and sys­tems that will ac­com­mo­date best prac­tices emerg­ing glob­al­ly and to em­brace tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled so­lu­tions which will ul­ti­mate­ly lead to the in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing pas­sion­ate­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for by the CoP.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said this trans­for­ma­tion thrust was al­so ur­gent­ly re­quired for the po­lice ser­vice to com­ply with the new ini­tia­tives and pro­ce­dures aris­ing out of the re­cent­ly in­tro­duced Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules de­signed to elim­i­nate pro­tract­ed de­lays and un­nec­es­sary wastage of State re­sources whilst still ad­her­ing to the over­rid­ing ob­jec­tive of achiev­ing swift jus­tice with­out com­pro­mise of due process.