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Thursday, July 17, 2025

Rowley: Police Service headless

'That's why sol­diers pushed them aside'

by

20140723

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams has made the Po­lice Ser­vice an eu­nuch, caus­ing sol­diers to push them aside.Dur­ing a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment pub­lic meet­ing at the Massy Stores carpark, St Au­gus­tine, on Tues­day night, Row­ley said the army had tak­en the po­si­tion that the po­lice had col­lapsed."He has con­vert­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice to a eu­nuch. The Po­lice Ser­vice is head­less and the crim­i­nals know it," Row­ley said.

He said that was why the army "pushed aside" the po­lice in or­der to in­ves­ti­gate the death of one of their own, Lance Cpl Kay­o­de Thomas, who was killed in Laven­tille last month.Row­ley called on the De­fence Force to re­frain from tar­nish­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of the army. He said he had been filled with pride sev­er­al times while ob­serv­ing T&T sol­diers de­liv­er­ing aid in Haiti, St Vin­cent, Do­mini­ca and oth­er coun­tries.

He added: "I want to say to the head of the De­fence Force tonight, you have a proud tra­di­tion. You are one of the few of the coun­try's in­sti­tu­tions where the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple feel that you rep­re­sent the best that this coun­try has to of­fer."Do not do any­thing to bring your army or your Coast Guard in­to dis­re­pute."In this pe­ri­od of dis­or­der, I am ask­ing the De­fence Force, do not do any­thing that would tar­nish the well-earned rep­u­ta­tion of the De­fence Force."

Row­ley said the fact that Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith con­doned the ac­tion by sol­diers made the sit­u­a­tion worse.He slammed the Gov­ern­ment for a crime plan which in­clud­ed "com­fort po­lice" and ques­tioned Gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to ap­point a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.Row­ley told the crowd his com­mu­ni­ty had re­cent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced a sit­u­a­tion where men wear­ing red shirts were pa­trolling the area in an Almera car. Row­ley said when he ap­proached the men, he was told they were com­fort po­lice.

He added: "They should ap­point a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice but in­stead of do­ing that and rais­ing the morale of po­lice of­fi­cers, they ap­point com­fort po­lice to dri­ve around in strange cars and bring­ing com­fort."What I want to know, is the per­sons who you put out there to play po­lice, do they have po­lice uni­forms? How do we know who they are? Are they armed? Are they trained in polic­ing? How many mil­lions are you pay­ing for cars for them?" he asked.

Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion had gone to Gov­ern­ment with a ten-point plan and on­ly a prop­er po­lice ser­vice could re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly to the crime prob­lem."You can­not have a prop­er po­lice ser­vice if the head of the Po­lice Ser­vice is on a ten days. Mr Williams is on a per­ma­nent ten days," said Row­ley.Williams has been act­ing as CoP since 2012 and has had his con­tract ex­tend­ed for sev­er­al six-month pe­ri­ods.


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