Yvonne Ba­boolal

The Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee (ESC) has writ­ten to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) call­ing for the re­moval of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs for what it is claim­ing is "un­ac­cept­able racist be­hav­iour." The call comes af­ter Gibbs at a me­dia brief­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry last Fri­day said the po­lice had to sort through all the peo­ple (ar­rest­ed) and ev­i­dence ob­tained so far "so who's who in the zoo will take a lit­tle work." Gibbs' com­ment came af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said the struc­ture of lo­cal gangs was copied from their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts with some hav­ing a board of di­rec­tors in their big busi­ness op­er­a­tions. "That is un­ac­cept­able racist be­hav­iour It is un­for­giv­able for a for­eign­er from Cana­da to be talk­ing about our peo­ple, whether in­no­cent or guilty, as though they are an­i­mals," Kam­bon said at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the ESC's Berg­er­ac Road, Mar­aval, of­fice. "Gibbs must now apol­o­gise to the peo­ple of T&T for his racist and con­temp­tu­ous re­marks and re­sign from our coun­try's Po­lice Ser­vice where, clear­ly, a per­son who sees our youth in such a light is not fit to hold of­fice," Kam­bon said.

A news re­lease from the di­rec­tor, Pub­lic Af­fairs Unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day af­ter­noon said Gibbs made the zoo com­ment in re­sponse to a ques­tion from the me­dia on how many gang lead­ers were ar­rest­ed. "The com­mis­sion­er was ex­plain­ing that po­lice of­fi­cers were con­tin­u­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and sort­ing through in­tel­li­gence and ev­i­dence that would help to cat­e­gorise per­sons as to their hi­er­ar­chi­cal po­si­tions in a par­tic­u­lar crime group," the re­lease said. "The state­ment made was not in­tend­ed to cause any of­fence, dis­re­spect or de­mean any group in T&T."