Camille Clarke

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mervyn Richard­son said of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain CID sim­ply want­ed to in­ter­view Crime Watch host Ian Al­leyne when they went to Ex­press House on Thurs­day night. Richard­son was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's dai­ly news brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.

He said the po­lice had made sev­er­al at­tempts to com­mu­ni­cate with Al­leyne and even vis­it­ed his Ch­agua­nas home. "I in­ves­ti­gat­ed, and we have made a num­ber of ini­tia­tives," he said. "As re­cent as Wednes­day, of­fi­cers made per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion to in­ter­view him. He said he will get back to the of­fi­cers and that passed on.

"On Thurs­day, they called at his house with­out a re­sponse and came back emp­ty-hand­ed," Richard­son said. Richard­son said the po­lice were told by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to in­ter­view Al­leyne. They went to CCN build­ing and stood for 45 min­utes in the rain, he said. Richard­son dis­missed the no­tion that there was a vendet­ta against Al­leyne.

"We are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a broad­cast that was on na­tion­al TV. This is a fact, and the ba­sis of that en­quiry was gen­er­at­ed. I want to state that as we con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate, we took ad­vice from the DPP. It is not a per­son­al vendet­ta on the whole," Richard­son said. "I am to­tal­ly sat­is­fied with all ef­forts made by the of­fi­cers. All pro­to­cols were ob­served," he said.