An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro did not breach pro­to­col when he left the ju­ris­dic­tion last week.

In fact, se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have con­firmed that the top cop ap­plied to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) for emer­gency leave and was grant­ed per­mis­sion to leave the coun­try. How­ev­er, of­fi­cials have re­fused to say when Gue­var­ro left and when he is due to re­turn.

And while pub­lic de­bate con­tin­ues over his ab­sence, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ju­nior Ben­jamin has de­nied sug­ges­tions the TTPS is “lead­er­less” at this time.

While Ben­jamin is not in re­ceipt of an in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment as the act­ing CoP, he has as­sumed the role un­til Gue­var­ro re­turns.

Guardian Me­dia learned Ben­jamin yes­ter­day car­ried out du­ties, which in­clud­ed a tour of the new po­lice post at the Ed­die Hart Recre­ation Ground in Tacarigua, and al­so signed off on doc­u­ments.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin ac­knowl­edged Gue­var­ro’s ab­sence but de­clined to share any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on what ne­ces­si­tat­ed his sud­den de­par­ture, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Nev­er­the­less, Ben­jamin urged all of­fi­cers and the pub­lic not to be dis­tract­ed by the sug­ges­tion the com­mis­sion­er erred or act­ed out­side the law when he left the coun­try.

“The TTPS has not lost sight of what it has to do and we will con­tin­ue to car­ry out our man­date,” Ben­jamin said.

Seek­ing to dis­miss claims that Gue­var­ro had act­ed out­side of le­gal pa­ra­me­ters when he left the coun­try, one of­fi­cial said he fol­lowed pro­to­col by ap­ply­ing to the PolSC for leave.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing this, of­fi­cials ex­plained, next move would have been for the PolSC to sub­mit a rec­om­men­da­tion for an act­ing ap­point­ment to the Pres­i­dent, who would have for­ward­ed it to the Par­lia­ment, where it would have been de­bat­ed and then de­cid­ed up­on. As Par­lia­ment is cur­rent­ly in re­cess, the of­fi­cials said, this could not be done, hence the rea­son why Ben­jamin, as the next most se­nior of­fi­cer in the TTPS, as­sumed the role.

Gue­var­ro’s re­turn.

All calls and mes­sages to Gue­var­ro, as well as PolSC chair­man Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace went unan­swered up to press time.