Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

For­mer head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas said yes­ter­day that the Prime Min­is­ter should not have re­ferred the Fly­ing Squad is­sue to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams for in­ves­ti­ga­tion."I find it very strange in­deed that Williams was asked to in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter should be con­duct­ed by an out­side body," Du­mas said.

He point­ed out, how­ev­er, "It is quite clear that the Prime Min­is­ter has not as­so­ci­at­ed her­self with Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. She sim­ply re­peat­ed what Warn­er said. The Prime Min­is­ter did not in­di­cate that she agreed with him."Warn­er has said he knew noth­ing about the new unit.The PM an­nounced in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day that she had re­ferred the mat­ter to Williams.

Williams has re­peat­ed­ly said he had no knowl­edge of the New Fly­ing Squad In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (NF­SIU) un­til he read about it in a T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle pub­lished on Feb­ru­ary 2.How­ev­er, in a re­port that Heer­ah sub­mit­ted to Warn­er last week, he said he had ap­proached the CoP to ask if it was pos­si­ble for for­mer po­lice in­spec­tor Mervyn Cord­ner and his unit, which he de­scribed as "vol­un­tary," to be­come Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRPs) of­fi­cers.

Heer­ah said in the re­port that the CoP dis­missed the sug­ges­tion.Du­mas de­scribed Heer­ah's re­port as an at­tempt to "cov­er the truth," and dis­missed his at­tempts to dis­tance him­self from the squad.Heer­ah said he had re­ceived e-mails about the unit from ac­coun­tant Rocky Pacheco, but "most, if not all the times, I was the re­cip­i­ent and not the orig­i­na­tor."

Du­mas com­ment­ed, "An e-mail is the best pa­per trail to prove any­thing. Whether he was the orig­i­na­tor of the e-mail or not, the fact is there was con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the two men on the mat­ter. E-mails brought in­to the pub­lic do­main have shown this. Heer­ah's re­port and the e-mail trail are linked to­geth­er."I am alarmed over this en­tire in­ci­dent."

In an e-mail dat­ed Oc­to­ber 10, and head­ed "Let­ters from NFS," sent from Heer­ah's e-mail ad­dress to Pacheco, Heer­ah wrote, "OK. I re­viewed the let­ters. What I need ur­gent­ly is a draft of the let­ter to Richard­son to ini­tialise the ac­tions for­ward."DCP Mervyn Richard­son had sug­gest­ed that Cord­ner and his unit should be made SRPs.Pacheco was re­cent­ly fired as the man­ag­er of fi­nance at the SWAT Es­tate Po­lice Com­pa­ny Ltd.

Du­mas al­so dis­missed Heer­ah's claim that a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual had of­fered ve­hi­cles pro bono to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in the fight against crime.Heer­ah's re­port does not de­ny that the eight ve­hi­cles used by the NF­SIU were from Mis­cel­la­neous Mar­ket­ing Ltd, a com­pa­ny from which the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice leas­es un­marked ve­hi­cles.The di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny are Sham and Rachel Mo­hammed.

Heer­ah said an arrange­ment was made with an in­di­vid­ual who had pre­vi­ous­ly of­fered the use of his ve­hi­cles free of charge to meet the trans­port re­quire­ments of Cord­ner and his squad."That has to be one of the most non­sen­si­cal state­ments I have ever heard com­ing from a se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cial," Du­mas said. "In pol­i­tics there is noth­ing like a free lunch. If I of­fer some­thing to you I ex­pect some­thing in re­turn."

In fact, he con­clud­ed, "I re­gret to say I do not be­lieve what Mr Heer­ah is say­ing. Crit­i­cal el­e­ments have been omit­ted from his state­ment."This is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. There is no pro bono arrange­ment with any min­istry."Heer­ah's re­port said Cord­ner's unit need­ed the ve­hi­cles to en­sure "crit­i­cal time­frames were met so that the TTPS could re­ceive ac­tion­able in­for­ma­tion." This was in con­nec­tion with a mar­i­jua­na field in the North­ern Range.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments yes­ter­day from Grena­da, where he is at­tend­ing the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Kei­th Mitchell Cab­i­net, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said an at­tempt was be­ing made to "fool the na­tion.""All the el­e­ments show that a Fly­ing Squad was re­vived. Un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T the min­is­ter is re­spon­si­ble for what hap­pens legal­ly in his min­istry.

"No of­fi­cial has any au­thor­i­ty to ac­cept any­thing pro bono from any­one or make any such arrange­ment. It is lies and more lies. "This has to be a joke. Who gave Heer­ah the au­thor­i­ty to make this pro bono arrange­ment?" Ma­haraj said.