Geisha Kow­lessar

An act of be­tray­al that cuts deep in­to the very heart of the Po­lice Ser­vice. This was how act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert vent­ed his anger yes­ter­day, over the cache of arms, am­mu­ni­tion and nar­cotics found hid­den in parts of the ceil­ing at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion last Sat­ur­day. Philbert, while ad­dress­ing me­dia mem­bers at a press brief­ing held at Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, minced no words as he promised to seek out the per­pe­tra­tors and bring them to jus­tice.

And one such means, Philbert said, was to have some 38 of­fi­cers, who had since been trans­ferred from the sta­tion, to un­der­go DNA test­ing and be fin­ger­print­ed. De­spite these as­sur­ances, the top cop cit­ed a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent in March 2008 at San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, where a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na was dis­cov­ered hid­den in lock­ers. Eight of­fi­cers were sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred from that sta­tion. That mat­ter is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause of in­com­plete foren­sic test­ing. Re­fer­ring to the in­ci­dent at St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion as a "burn­ing is­sue," Philbert said the items seized had al­so been sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James for analy­sis.

"We con­sid­er this mat­ter to be very se­ri­ous and it cuts deep in­to the heart of the Po­lice Ser­vice...it cuts in­to the in­tegri­ty of the ser­vice...it cuts in­to the pub­lic con­fi­dence which we are con­cerned about and which we find have lost ground," he said. Say­ing the seized items were "ill-placed" in sta­tion, Philbert added, "We see this as a be­tray­al of the Po­lice Ser­vice." He said there was no pri­ma fa­cie ev­i­dence to al­low the sus­pen­sion of cer­tain of­fi­cers at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion. "The law does not al­low us to mad­ly scram­ble peo­ple up and take them to court," he said. "We would have pre­ferred if it was eas­i­er to pur­sue this man­ner, but we must fol­low the rule of law," Philbert said.

He said the trans­fer of of­fi­cers from the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion to oth­er sta­tions with­in the North­ern Di­vi­sion did not rep­re­sent "the end process of the probe." Nei­ther, Philbert added, did it serve as "pun­ish­ment" to the trans­ferred law­men. "The idea of trans­fer­ring the of­fi­cers is to al­low a free op­er­a­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and we wish to start afresh at St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion, so the gen­er­al pub­lic will not be go­ing to any 'ques­tion­able' of­fi­cers at that sta­tion," he said.