Sascha?Wil­son

Good rid­dance. That's the re­ac­tion of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­tired Po­lice New York and Trinidad on the res­ig­na­tion of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Clay­ton Black­man said it was a mis­take to hire them, since the job of top cop should have gone to Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Stephen?Williams.

"The process of se­lec­tion was flawed from the get-go. My as­so­ci­a­tion is say­ing good rid­dance and let's see what the lo­cal com­mis­sion­er will do," Black­man said in news re­lease. The Cana­di­an crime-busters' res­ig­na­tion was an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day, af­ter re­ports that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack?Warn­er had met with her about ter­mi­nat­ing their con­tracts. Williams was by­passed twice for the post by the pre­vi­ous and present gov­ern­ment.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Black­man said, "The as­so­ci­a­tion has been say­ing for a long time that bring­ing Mr Gibbs and Mr Ewats­ki with tax­pay­ers' mon­ey was a waste of time. The process of se­lec­tion was flawed from the be­gin­ning. All the mon­ey they pay­ing to Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty when they could utilise that for a lo­cal com­mis­sion­er.?We have the re­sources here.?We have peo­ple like Wayne "Watch­man" Hayde, who has a big se­cu­ri­ty post in the Mid­dle East, Stephen Williams, Mr Richard­son."

He said Gibbs and Ewats­ki did not have a prop­er crime plan. Say­ing that Williams was fit and prop­er to take on the task, he said un­der his lead­er­ship the crime rate would be re­duced. One of the ad­van­tages, he said, is that Williams has the sup­port of the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers.

"Once you get the morale of the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion up and a bet­ter work­ing re­la­tion­ship with First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers, that in it­self is mo­ti­va­tion for po­lice­men." Black­man called on the au­thor­i­ties to give Williams a chance, since "he will make an ex­cel­lent com­mis­sion­er."