Robert Alon­zo

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert, who was grant­ed four ex­ten­sions, was yes­ter­day told to pack up and leave of­fice. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) wrote Philbert yes­ter­day, ad­vis­ing him to im­me­di­ate­ly demit of­fice. As a re­sult, the PSC has ap­point­ed Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams– who was by­passed for the top cop post in 2008–to act as com­mis­sion­er un­til Cana­di­an Dwayne Gibbs takes over next month. Philbert, whose fourth ex­ten­sion was to end on Sep­tem­ber 30, will of­fi­cial­ly hand over of­fice to Williams on Mon­day.

Late yes­ter­day, Philbert con­firmed the de­vel­op­ment, ad­mit­ting that the PSC's let­ter had ar­rived at his of­fice. When in­ter­viewed, Philbert said he had not per­son­al­ly read the let­ter but was aware of its con­tents. He said: "I fin­ish work and I am pleased with my per­for­mance as act­ing com­mis­sion­er." Philbert, in his nor­mal stern tone, added: "I am no stooge and I have no an­i­mos­i­ty against any­one." As to what may have caused the sud­den move by the PSC to write, ask­ing him to leave, Philbert said he could not say why.

But there has been wide­spread spec­u­la­tion by sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cers last night that Philbert, dur­ing yes­ter­day's CN­MG's Morn­ing Talk Show, may have said some­thing which of­fend­ed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. On the show, he ex­plained that for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph had promised a pay hike for all po­lice of­fi­cers–a burn­ing is­sue now be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion. Philbert said when he made this state­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day's tele­vi­sion in­ter­view, he spoke the truth.

He said: "I spoke the truth when I said so. He (Joseph) had pro­posed a salary in­crease for all of­fi­cers. I'm not beg­ging any­one for any­thing. I'm not stooging for any­one."

It was on­ly on Thurs­day that Cab­i­net ap­proved the salaries of Gibbs and his Cana­di­an coun­ter­part Jack Ewats­ki, deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er elect. Gibbs is to be paid US$205,000 per an­num, and Ewats­ki, Can$200,000 per an­num, un­der a three-year con­tract. Philbert, who was born on De­cem­ber 16, 1948, joined the Po­lice Ser­vice on Feb­ru­ary 21,1964. He worked his way up the ranks as an in­ves­ti­ga­tor in the Rob­bery Squad, Homi­cide Bu­reau and In­tel­li­gence Unit, apart from sev­er­al oth­er elite units in the ser­vice. He was ap­point­ed act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er on June 27, 2008, af­ter the re­tire­ment of his pre­de­ces­sor Trevor Paul who had rec­om­mend­ed Philbert for the post when he (Paul) was demit­ting of­fice. Philbert has al­ways main­tained that he was ready to leave the ser­vice, hav­ing served as a po­lice­man for al­most 46 years.

He has al­so said in sev­er­al in­ter­views that the Po­lice Ser­vice still faced some chal­lenges, but did his best with the re­sources which were avail­able to him. In Ju­ly this year, Philbert took on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan af­ter the AG, at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, crit­i­cised him (Philbert) for fail­ing to pro­tect the con­struc­tion site of the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ church on the Heights of Gua­napo. Loot­ers cart­ed away more than $5 mil­lion in build­ing ma­te­ri­als from the site. But the same evening, Philbert shot back at Ram­lo­gan, say­ing Ram­lo­gan was out of place. Philbert said Ram­lo­gan ex­hib­it­ed "con­tempt, dis­dain, bias and an­i­mos­i­ty to the of­fice of the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice."