Jesse Ramdeo

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard has de­fend­ed his re­served ap­proach af­ter com­ing un­der fire from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie over is­sues im­pact­ing the op­er­a­tions at his of­fice, say­ing he did not want to en­gage in a pub­lic spat over the is­sues.

The im­passe first arose last month when Gas­pard com­plained of a staff short­age com­pro­mis­ing the op­er­a­tions of his Of­fice. This prompt­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley to fire back dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, say­ing the DPP had been as­signed an of­fice in Port-of-Spain which had re­mained un­oc­cu­pied for years.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to de­ter­mine strate­gies to achieve greater ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness yes­ter­day, Gas­pard broke his si­lence, shar­ing his side on the con­tentious is­sue, which fea­tured a sting­ing press re­lease from Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and com­plaints of in­ef­fi­cien­cy with­in the of­fice from AG Ar­mour, which pro­mot­ed a let­ter of com­plaint and calls for an apol­o­gy from Ar­mour by at­tor­neys with­in the DPP’s Of­fice.

Gas­pard de­fend­ed his cen­sored ap­proach to a wran­gle which the Prime Min­is­ter even­tu­al­ly main­tained was not an at­tack on the DPP.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the in­ci­dent by JSC mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Gas­pard stat­ed, “My gut­tur­al or in­stinc­tive I should say re­sponse, I would have bri­dled that, and I look to­wards the big pic­ture, so I de­cid­ed not to con­de­scend in­to any par­tic­u­lars so as to tra­verse or meet cer­tain things that would have been said by the quite ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice, not that I can­not, I de­cid­ed not to in the in­ter­est of deal­ing with these mat­ters re­spon­si­bly, so what­ev­er in­jury may have been caused by that mis­sive, I was pre­pared to take those in­juries, put them on the back seat and dri­ve for­ward with the in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go in mind.”

Last month, out­go­ing Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) pres­i­dent Sophia Chote, SC, wrote sep­a­rate­ly to DPP Gas­pard and AG Ar­mour seek­ing meet­ings with them in an at­tempt to re­solve the on­go­ing is­sues with­in the DPP’s Of­fice.

Dur­ing the Cari­com Crime Sym­po­sium at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day, Chief Jus­tice Archie said he was open to the pro­pos­al by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion that it be the me­di­a­tor in the im­passe be­tween his of­fice and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the JSC pan­el yes­ter­day, Gas­pard al­so not­ed that TTPS Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cials were not the on­ly agents to deem his pro­posed of­fice as un­safe and that he was cur­rent­ly await­ing the find­ings from an­oth­er re­cent re­port to de­ter­mine the next step as it re­lates to oc­cu­pan­cy of the Park Street build­ing.

“Last Fri­day, the AG, my­self and oth­ers, in­clud­ing Spe­cial Branch, vis­it­ed the build­ing, there was a two-hour meet­ing and there is to be a fol­low-up meet­ing pend­ing a re­port from Spe­cial Branch.”

He re­it­er­at­ed that oth­er agen­cies had pre­vi­ous­ly shared the se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns he and his staff had raised.

“My re­luc­tance to take my staff in­to the build­ing was pred­i­cat­ed on what the ex­perts said about the build­ing and some­thing no­body wants to say in the pub­lic do­main, but I will say it. Rec­om­men­da­tions to show up the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of that build­ing did not first come from the Spe­cial Branch, it came from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the tech­nocrats of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, not Roger Gas­pard, the DPP. I al­ways said I do not have the ex­per­tise, I do not have the forte.”

Dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Barataria, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment had spent $45 mil­lion ren­o­vat­ing, out­fit­ting and leas­ing an ex­ec­u­tive build­ing in Port-of-Spain to house the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions which had re­mained va­cant for years.

Yes­ter­day, Gas­pard said bar­ring the cur­rent is­sues af­fect­ing op­er­a­tions at his of­fice, he re­mained com­mit­ted to mit­i­gat­ing in­stances of dis­rup­tions.

“Bear­ing in mind what I have been do­ing all the while is to per­haps try and en­sure a greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween my of­fice and the re­spec­tive stake­hold­ers in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” he said.

The DPP said that the ma­jor pri­or­i­ty ar­eas to be ad­dressed this year were the is­sues of staff short­age, the ac­qui­si­tion of a suit­able of­fice in the north and the peren­ni­al chal­lenge of back­logs fac­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.