The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty is mov­ing full speed ahead with the probe re­gard­ing the award of a $900,772 con­tract to a com­pa­ny for a light air­craft to con­duct an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives for the Po­lice Ser­vice. The au­thor­i­ty's di­rec­tor, Gillian Lucky, con­firmed that the com­plaint did, in fact, fall with­in the re­mit of the au­thor­i­ty and there­fore the or­gan­i­sa­tion was du­ty-bound to ini­ti­ate ac­tion. Last week, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley wrote to chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Prof Ramesh De­osaran and to Lucky, to de­ter­mine whether there was se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct in the award­ing of the con­tract. "We have de­ter­mined that the mat­ter does, in fact, fall with­in in the re­mit of the au­thor­i­ty and there­fore we have to ini­ti­ate ac­tion," Lucky said. "We are not an in­ves­tiga­tive body but the ac­tion we are tak­ing is pri­mar­i­ly ev­i­dence gath­er­ing to de­ter­mine whether any wrong­do­ing has been com­mit­ted."

She said the au­thor­i­ty had writ­ten to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy, re­quest­ing doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the pro­cure­ment process, and to De­osaran, re­quest­ing copies of the re­ports which were sub­mit­ted by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki on the mat­ter. Asked when the ev­i­dence-gath­er­ing op­er­a­tion was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed, Lucky said she could not set a time­line as that would de­pend on the re­sponse from the var­i­ous bod­ies to sub­mit the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments. She em­pha­sised that once the ev­i­dence showed that both Gibbs and Ewats­ki act­ed above board, that would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be the end of the mat­ter. Lucky said, how­ev­er, that if the two top cops were cul­pa­ble, ac­cord­ing the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed, then a file would be sub­mit­ted to the var­i­ous bod­ies, in­clud­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard for in­struc­tions. "If the ev­i­dence points to any se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct, then au­to­mat­i­cal­ly the au­thor­i­ty will have to sub­mit a file and from there a fur­ther de­ci­sion would be tak­en," Lucky said. She de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions made against Gibbs and Ewats­ki as very se­ri­ous, say­ing that the sub­ject had gen­er­at­ed much pub­lic de­bate.