Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says a for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the leak of in­ter­nal po­lice leave doc­u­ments.Speak­ing on a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, he said, “I see it as de­lib­er­ate sab­o­tage, and I have al­ready ap­point­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tor to look in­to this.”

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that there had been a re­as­sign­ment of ex­ec­u­tive port­fo­lios in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice by Gue­var­ro.

In the sur­prise move, Gue­var­ro sent As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), Cen­tral and South-West Di­vi­sions, Wayne Mys­tar, on 16 months of ac­crued va­ca­tion leave and trans­ferred Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (DCP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin, Suzette Mar­tin and Natasha George to new port­fo­lios.
Ben­jamin was moved from Op­er­a­tions to Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Mar­tin from In­tel­li­gence to Op­er­a­tions, and George from Ad­min­is­tra­tion to In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions. Those changes take ef­fect from Fri­day (Sep­tem­ber 26).

Mys­tar’s va­ca­tion leave, which be­gan on Mon­day, left many ask­ing why this was done at the height of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Gue­var­ro, in a state­ment to the me­dia is­sued last Tues­day, ad­dressed Mys­tar’s va­ca­tion leave, say­ing that while leave for ju­nior of­fi­cers has been re­strict­ed due to the SoE, se­nior of­fi­cers have been al­lowed to go on va­ca­tion.

Yes­ter­day, the CoP was again asked to ex­plain the leave for Mys­tar, af­ter a so­cial me­dia blog­ger leaked the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed va­ca­tion leave of sev­er­al of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Mys­tar, over the week­end.

Gue­var­ro con­demned the blog­ger for mak­ing the post and breach­ing TTPS con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, in a me­dia re­lease on Sun­day.

The top cop said the de­ci­sion to send Mys­tar on leave was nec­es­sary to pre­serve bal­ance with­in the lead­er­ship of the ser­vice, as he had to man­age the leave of oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers.

Yes­ter­day, he said, “When I called up­on the Gov­ern­ment for the SoE, and I took a de­ci­sion to call out of­fi­cers from leave, I nev­er called out first di­vi­sion of­fi­cers, and I con­tin­ued to main­tain leave man­age­ment of the first di­vi­sion of­fi­cers to en­sure there was enough strate­gic lead­er­ship at the helm of the TTPS.

“Mr Mys­tar was sup­posed to have been sent on leave be­fore this, but be­cause three oth­er per­sons who held the po­si­tion of As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er had ap­plied for some short leave, I put it off.”

He said the pool of se­nior of­fi­cers has since been aug­ment­ed, al­low­ing Mys­tar to go on leave.