Row­ley's news con­fer­ence

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley is in­sist­ing the Fly­ing Squad with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice has been re­vived and ex­ists.He spoke at a news con­fer­ence at his of­fice on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Row­ley said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must make a clear and com­pre­hen­sive state­ment on the mat­ter when she re­turned lat­er this week from a Cari­com in­ter-ses­sion­al meet­ing in Haiti.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has in­sist­ed that there is no Fly­ing Squad in the Po­lice Ser­vice.Row­ley said the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), chaired by for­mer MP Gillian Lucky, and the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion should in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic.In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian on Feb­ru­ary 1, for­mer in­spec­tor of po­lice Mervyn Cord­ner said the Fly­ing Squad was se­cret­ly re­vived last Ju­ly, weeks af­ter Warn­er was ap­point­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams promised to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter but has not re­vealed his find­ings as yet.Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion had in­for­ma­tion that proved some of the mem­bers of the re­vived squad have met in the wee hours of the morn­ing with Warn­er and oth­ers. He said the squad has done work and was giv­en ve­hi­cles to car­ry out its du­ties.

He said there was a mix­ture of fact and fic­tion in the pub­lic do­main on the mat­ter and the Gov­ern­ment had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to clar­i­fy the is­sue.Row­ley again called on Warn­er to re­sign over the is­sue. He al­so said the Gov­ern­ment had failed to deal with the crime prob­lem and de­spite Warn­er's claims that crime was be­ing ad­dressed, there had been more than 62 mur­ders in the first 50 days of the year.