Gail Alexan­der

If there are any breach­es of the law in the Po­lice Ser­vice's re­cruit­ment of a light air­plane, the mat­ter will be turned over to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to deal with, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day. He in­di­cat­ed this to re­porters dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate lunch break. Ram­lo­gan said he was re­view­ing a re­port on the is­sue from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy. He hoped to com­plete his re­view in less than two weeks. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and his deputy, Jack Ewats­ki, have come un­der Op­po­si­tion fire re­cent­ly for their move to re­cruit a light air­plane, for a three-month pi­lot project, from the T&T Air Sup­port Com­pa­ny.

The project, val­ued at $902,000, will test the use of the plane for var­i­ous polic­ing as­pects. Both po­lice of­fi­cials have stood by the re­cruit­ment process. Sandy re­cent­ly said Gibbs had the au­thor­i­ty to han­dle projects un­der $1 mil­lion but should have in­formed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan said his role was to re­view the mat­ter to see if there was any­thing to draw to the at­ten­tion of the rel­e­vant agency. He said he had asked for some fur­ther in­for­ma­tion to be added to the re­port he would re­ceive on the is­sue. He added: "That in­for­ma­tion should be forth­com­ing this week and when I get that I will com­plete my re­view to see if there were any breach­es in the mat­ter.

"I will then share my find­ings with the Prime Min­is­ter as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and, if need be, with the chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion." He said if any breach­es were found, the mat­ter would be turned over to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-em­pow­ered body to deal with such is­sues. Ram­lo­gan said if it was nec­es­sary for his re­view he would speak to Gibbs and Ewats­ki. He said the type of re­view he was do­ing could be com­plet­ed on the ba­sis of doc­u­ments.