In a wit­ness state­ment to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) for­mer com­mand fleet of­fi­cer of the De­fence Force Lester Rod­ney Ger­vais said he was asked by Garvin Heer­ah, di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NSOC), to act in an ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty for the Fly­ing Squad.The six-page state­ment dat­ed April 26, 2013 de­tailed meet­ings which in­volved Heer­ah, re­tired Sgt Mervyn Cord­ner and sev­er­al peo­ple from var­i­ous law en­force­ment units.One meet­ing took place at Don­rich Se­cu­ri­ty Firm at Pi­ar­co.

In re­count­ing the meet­ing Ger­vais said there was a gath­er­ing of about 50 peo­ple and com­prised a mix­ture of law en­force­ment per­son­nel, re­tired sol­diers, serv­ing sol­diers, re­tired and serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, of­fi­cers pre­vi­ous­ly as­signed to the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime unit of T&T (Sautt) im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers and civil­ians."When the meet­ing com­menced Mervyn Cord­ner and some mem­bers of the group sat at a head ta­ble. Cord­ner then in­tro­duced me to the gath­er­ing and in do­ing so was em­phat­ic in point­ing out that my at­ten­dance was in an ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty and li­ai­son to give feed­back to Di­rec­tor Heer­ah."He re­marked I had noth­ing to do with their func­tions and said, 'We do­ing we own thing," the state­ment said.

Ger­vais said when the meet­ing be­gan he ob­served dif­fer­ent speak­ers ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing.He said this con­firmed his knowl­edge that peo­ple had dif­fer­ent law en­force­ment back­grounds more so when the fe­male im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer spoke in an "an­i­mat­ed man­ner" and high­light­ed her dis­plea­sure over the be­hav­iour of cer­tain mem­bers of the team."She in­sin­u­at­ed that an op­er­a­tion of the unit was com­pro­mised by the ac­tions of po­lice of­fi­cers. By this time, and based on what was be­ing dis­cussed, I per­ceived that the unit was car­ry­ing out or en­gaged in the plan­ning of op­er­a­tions."It ap­peared from the dis­cus­sion that per­sons were op­er­at­ing as if were 're­al po­lice.' When some­one else spoke, I gleaned that a serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cer was trans­ferred be­cause of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a he­li­copter flight to iden­ti­fy a mar­i­jua­na field," the state­ment said.

Ger­vais said a re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer who was re­ferred to as "Sharp" ex­pressed fear of be­ing "re­ject­ed" and sug­gest­ed that he should qual­i­fy for the unit rather than the oth­ers who were not cer­tain to pass poly­graph tests.Ger­vais said ques­tions were al­so raised by a Mr Mil­lette re­gard­ing pay. Cord­ner in re­sponse said the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter (then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer) had "put his sig­na­ture on a doc­u­ment and that every­thing was be­ing or­gan­ised.""He spoke about the ac­qui­si­tion of in­sur­ance for mem­bers of the unit, ob­tain­ing of pass­ports and visas and med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions."He in­tro­duced an East In­di­an per­son as a doc­tor who was on board with the unit," the state­ment said.

Ger­vais said he told the gath­er­ing that the unit should func­tion as an arm to as­sist the po­lice with in­for­ma­tion and should not en­gage in polic­ing op­er­a­tions."I made this point be­cause of what I heard dur­ing the meet­ing. I tried to im­press up­on per­sons gath­ered that the po­lice need­ed to be con­vinced that they were trust­wor­thy."I al­so com­ment­ed on the fact that the mem­bers of the unit should not be mak­ing pre­ma­ture dis­clo­sures and di­vulging in­for­ma­tion, which should be left to au­tho­rised per­sons," the state­ment said.Ger­vais said he al­so re­mem­bered a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer speak­ing about the ac­qui­si­tion of a boat.He said he ad­vised that a boat need­ed to have cer­tain spec­i­fi­ca­tion for op­er­a­tions.Af­ter re­ceiv­ing an e-mail con­tain­ing the a price pro­pos­al Ger­vais ad­vised the unit that such a ves­sel was un­suit­able and too cost­ly."Af­ter this meet­ing I felt com­pelled to no­ti­fy Di­rec­tor Heer­ah that what he pro­posed to me was not what I had wit­nessed un­less some­one was not telling the truth. I got a feel­ing that some­thing was crit­i­cal­ly wrong with the pic­ture I was get­ting," the state­ment said.