Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher says a writ­ten re­port on the fi­as­co in­volv­ing firearms deal­er Brent Thomas will be sub­mit­ted to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in two weeks.

Min­is­ter Hinds had pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed that he had re­ceived a thor­ough oral re­port from Hare­wood-Christo­pher on the is­sue.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Hare­wood-Christo­pher con­firmed that Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Curt Si­mon was lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­tro­ver­sial ar­rest and hand-over of Thomas from Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties to lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cials last Oc­to­ber. Thomas’ re­turn to Trinidad was de­scribed by a High Court judge as an “ab­duc­tion” and a breach of process.

It has prompt­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be launched both here and in Bar­ba­dos, where that coun­try’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Dale Mar­shall, even­tu­al­ly de­fend­ed the in­put of the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Ser­vice in the mat­ter.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher yes­ter­day as­sured the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be void of any in­ter­fer­ence.

“What I would as­sure is that steps are be­ing made to en­sure of­fi­cers are prop­er­ly guid­ed in the per­for­mance of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” she said.

Hare­wood Christo­pher con­firmed that re­quests were made to the re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and Cari­com Im­pacs for a re­port on the in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, to date, she said there have been no sub­mis­sions from both en­ti­ties im­pli­cat­ed in the mat­ter. She was al­so un­able to con­firm whether the RSS was pre­vi­ous­ly in­volved in sim­i­lar ex­er­cis­es.

“It may have been the process be­fore but I am not aware and the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are be­ing con­duct­ed and I ex­pect to be ap­praised ac­cord­ing­ly.”

The top cop al­so as­sured that po­lice of­fi­cers were not rat­tled by the in­ci­dent. Ear­li­er this week, the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion called for po­lice of­fi­cers not to be used as a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball in the mat­ter as it not­ed that the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau of­fi­cers in­volved in the case had been of­fered coun­selling due to the scathing pub­lic crit­i­cism they have been re­ceiv­ing since the mat­ter be­came pub­lic.

—Jesse Ramdeo