Denyse Renne

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams has been sum­moned to an emer­gency meet­ing to­day with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC).The meet­ing is sched­uled to take place at 11 am at the com­mis­sion's of­fices, Pasea Road, Tu­na­puna.The com­mis­sion is chaired by Prof Ramesh De­osaran and in­cludes Ad­di­son Khan, Mar­tin George, Ken­neth Park­er and Jacque­line Cheese­man.

The group last met on Jan­u­ary 31 and had dis­cussed var­i­ous is­sues, among them the pro­ce­dure for ad­ver­tis­ing the post of com­mis­sion­er of po­lice.Sources say Williams's pres­ence was re­quest­ed by the com­mis­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing and it is ex­pect­ed he will be grilled about his crime ini­tia­tives and plans.As of yes­ter­day, the mur­der toll stood at 61 for the year.

Oth­er is­sues set to be tabled in­clude re­ports about the Fly­ing Squad be­ing re­vived and po­lice seek­ing re­dress via the courts over re­cent pro­mo­tions.The news that the Fly­ing Squad had been re­vived was ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed in the T&T Guardian. Last week, Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, pre­sid­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court, grant­ed leave to 18 of­fi­cers, all sergeants, to file a ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion.

They were by­passed for pro­mo­tion and are chal­leng­ing Williams' de­ci­sion.The of­fi­cers wrote let­ters to the com­mis­sion ex­press­ing dis­plea­sure over his in­abil­i­ty to ad­dress the is­sue af­ter they queried why they were by­passed, and the pro­ce­dure used to se­lect of­fi­cers who were pro­mot­ed.They al­so claimed the process used by Williams was bi­ased.Last month the act­ing top cop and two of his deputies, Si­mon Alex­is and Ray­mond Craig, were giv­en a six-month act­ing ex­ten­sion.

Sources say on Feb­ru­ary 1, the com­mis­sion wrote to var­i­ous stake­hold­ers ask­ing them to take part in a sur­vey rat­ing the per­for­mance of Williams and his deputies.The sur­vey be­came avail­able on­line yes­ter­day.Among the stake­hold­ers who re­ceived the let­ter was the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Sgt Anand Rame­sar said: "The as­so­ci­a­tion is aware of the sur­vey and we will be par­tic­i­pat­ing.

"We en­dorse the ef­forts of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to seek the views of the stake­hold­ers in this im­por­tant ex­er­cise."For too long stake­hold­ers such as ours would not have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to give an in­put," he added.

His col­league, PC Nicholas Phillip, 29, of Daisy Street, Siparia, al­so suf­fered a gun­shot wound to his right fore­arm and a bul­let graze to his head. He was said to be in a sta­ble con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal last night.The shoot­ing trig­gered a mas­sive lock­down of the south city as South­ern, Cen­tral and South West­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers co-or­di­nat­ed one of the biggest man­hunts for the year. Af­ter four hours, all four sus­pects were ar­rest­ed.

One sus­pect, of Table­land, was found cov­ered in blood hid­ing in the cor­ri­dors of Build­ing One at Em­ba­cadere, San Fer­nan­do, around 5 pm, while an­oth­er, of Princes Town, was nabbed close to the sea.The third sus­pect, al­so of Princes Town, was found sit­ting in a white SUV in the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal's car park. The fourth was al­so cap­tured at Em­ba­cadere around 6.30 pm.

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said around 2 pm, Man­war­ring and a par­ty of of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of a rob­bery at Mom's Din­er on Cipero Street, San Fer­nan­do. A dis­tress call was made but the thieves es­caped in a white AD wag­on.How­ev­er, Man­war­ring's team in­ter­cept­ed the get­away car close to Ra­hamut's Ser­vice Sta­tion at Cross Cross­ing.At­ten­dant Sham Sookram said, "The po­lice put them (sus­pects) to lie down and then took them away."

How­ev­er, the of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly fol­lowed more sus­pects at Pad­more Street, where there was an ex­change of gun­fire. Dur­ing this melee, one of the men wres­tled away Man­war­ring's gun and shot him in the chest. Phillip was al­so shot but man­aged to call for back­up. The sus­pects then es­caped from the ve­hi­cle.Se­nior Supt Ce­cil San­tana mo­bilised troops and scores of po­lice re­spond­ed. They trudged through dense man­groves, the Em­ba­cadere dump and the Gulf of Paria shore­line at Kings Wharf, search­ing for the sus­pects.

The po­lice he­li­copter al­so hov­ered while the city was on lock­down. De­tec­tives al­so board­ed the San Fer­nan­do wa­ter taxi and searched pas­sen­gers. They lat­er found a sus­pect at Build­ing One, Em­ba­cadere.Po­lice found one sus­pect ly­ing on the ground cov­ered in blood. As he was brought down­stairs, with a T-shirt cov­er­ing his face, one of the res­i­dents shout­ed, "Thank God they ar­rest him. Is one day for the po­lice and one day for the thief."