Geisha Kow­lessar

The Sel­wyn Ryan crime re­port which found that be­tween 30 to 40 per cent of the mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice were cor­rupt has been de­scribed as "way be­yond imag­i­na­tion" by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams.The re­port was put to­geth­er by a five-mem­ber com­mit­tee chaired by Ryan to en­quire in­to the cause of crim­i­nal­i­ty.Williams was speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day of the Na­tion­al Cri­sis Man­age­ment Work­shop on bio-ter­ror­ism at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James.Say­ing he had no idea what mea­sures were used by Ryan to come up with the sta­tis­tic of rogue el­e­ments in the Po­lice Ser­vice Williams added that he had not read the re­port.

But he in­sist­ed the fig­ure of cor­rupt cops was "in­ac­cu­rate."He added: "Sure­ly I could tell this na­tion there is no way in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice there is 40 per cent cor­rup­tion."If you just do the num­bers... an or­gan­i­sa­tion which has an ap­proved strength of 7,715... for me it's a crazy piece of sta­tis­tic and I don't want to com­ment on the is­sue of how it was com­piled." Pressed fur­ther about the per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion he said that was noth­ing new."There is al­ways a per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion in all po­lice ser­vices across the globe. What you do is try and min­imise cor­rupt of­fi­cers in your or­gan­i­sa­tion. This is not some­thing that is unique but it is of great con­cern to me," he added.

ACP Williams on Sel­wyn Ryan re­port stats

The re­port al­so sug­gest­ed that of­fi­cers should pur­sue their cor­rupt col­leagues more vig­or­ous­ly and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.Williams, when asked how he viewed that, re­fused to com­ment. He main­tained he was yet to read the re­port and would not com­ment on sec­ond hand in­for­ma­tion giv­en to him, even from the me­dia."The sad thing about com­ment­ing on what some­one else said or wrote is how I am to ver­i­fy what you are quot­ing is in fact in the Ryan re­port. I have not had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to read it. I don't even have a copy of it," Williams added.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, who was al­so present, said he was not aware that the po­lice were not go­ing af­ter the "big fish".He said: "Half the things in this coun­try is based on old talk and half is based on mau­vais langue. If they bring ev­i­dence then that is some­thing else."But I have no ev­i­dence of any 'big fish' or 'medi­um-sized' fish that they are not go­ing against." Warn­er added.

Asked why it be­came nec­es­sary for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to go be­yond the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to find so­lu­tions for the crime prob­lem Warn­er said the Prime Min­is­ter could go "any­where to find a so­lu­tion.""The so­lu­tions are not con­fined to the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, to the Prime Min­is­ter or even the po­lice. It can even come from the mouths of babes and suck­lings," he added.He said crime was be­ing fought from a two-pronged ap­proach, a "soft­er" ap­proach be­ing the Hoop of Life bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion and the "hard" ap­proach."There are those guys out there who need the hard ap­proach and there­fore it is both hard and soft," he said.