Geisha Kow­lessar

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams says an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing in­to claims that the Fly­ing Squad is back in op­er­a­tion.In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Feb­ru­ary 1, re­tired po­lice in­spec­tor Mervyn Cord­ner claimed Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er ap­proached him to head the covert unit.

At a press brief­ing held yes­ter­day at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, Williams said the mat­ter could not be in­ves­ti­gat­ed like a crime."It is in­for­ma­tion com­ing to your hand and you want to make some clear de­ter­mi­na­tion," he said.Is there some­thing which is crim­i­nal in­volved in this, or is there some­thing which is il­le­gal, is there some­thing which must be ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dressed?

"So it is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed to col­late the type of in­for­ma­tion," Williams said.Say­ing he had de­lib­er­ate­ly stayed away from com­ment­ing on the mat­ter, Williams said he had not heard Cord­ner men­tion his of­fice or his name in a di­rect way."The gen­tle­man has had no en­gage­ment with me," Williams in­sist­ed.

He said while the mat­ter had en­gaged the full at­ten­tion of the me­dia, no ques­tions were be­ing asked about its le­gal­i­ty."And if we start to think about law­ful con­duct, some­body com­ing to the me­dia say­ing, 'I am car­ry­ing out a func­tion and I am car­ry­ing out that func­tion with­out any le­gal clar­i­ty,' why is it no one is ask­ing, 'So why are you do­ing this il­le­gal thing?'" Williams asked.

A re­port in the Sun­day Guardian of Feb­ru­ary 3 quot­ed Cord­ner as say­ing that the Fly­ing Squad, which was dis­band­ed in the 1980s, was re­vived in Ju­ly 2012 and has been work­ing out of a build­ing at Fac­to­ry Road, Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca.Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, Cord­ner said a crime plan was sub­mit­ted to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and a bud­get of $180 mil­lion re­quest­ed to car­ry out op­er­a­tions for a pe­ri­od of two years. He said a lack of fund­ing had stymied the work of the unit.

The re­port al­so quot­ed Cord­ner as say­ing that the Fly­ing Squad com­pris­es 75 re­tired of­fi­cers who pre­vi­ous­ly worked at var­i­ous state en­ter­pris­es that in­clude the po­lice, Pris­ons Ser­vice, Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Au­thor­i­ty and the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion.