Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the de­ci­sion to send a se­nior of­fi­cer on va­ca­tion leave last week was in ac­cor­dance with his law­ful en­ti­tle­ments and in align­ment with strate­gic plan­ning.

Last Tues­day, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) of Cen­tral and South-West Di­vi­sions Wayne Mys­tar was sent on 16 months (330 work­ing days) of ac­crued va­ca­tion leave, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly.

Yes­ter­day, a pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia blog­ger leaked the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed va­ca­tion leave of sev­er­al of­fi­cers.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Gue­var­ro con­demned the blog­ger for mak­ing the post but more so for breach­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

The top cop said the unau­tho­rised re­lease of in­ter­nal per­son­nel da­ta was geared to­wards dis­rupt­ing care­ful­ly co­or­di­nat­ed de­ploy­ment strate­gies and ex­pos­ing sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion.

He said that it should nev­er have been weaponised for per­son­al vin­di­ca­tion.

“This act is not whistle­blow­ing; it is out­right sab­o­tage,” he stat­ed.

Hint­ing that the source of the leak may be known, Gue­var­ro said the leak was done by a “not so anony­mous” source with pet­ty mal­ice and reck­less dis­re­gard for in­sti­tu­tion­al in­tegri­ty.

“The nar­ra­tive be­ing ped­dled is not on­ly false but al­so de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing and de­signed to sow dis­cord,” he said.

“When a dis­grun­tled of­fi­cer choos­es to mas­quer­ade as a whistle­blow­er, armed on­ly with va­ca­tion leave spread­sheets and wound­ed pride, it is less an act of courage and more akin to a tantrum in uni­form,” he added as he said the on­ly thing anony­mous about this leak was the in­tegri­ty it lacked.

In a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, the blog­ger shared a pho­to show­ing the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed leave of se­nior of­fi­cers. The post showed at least four se­nior of­fi­cers with more back­up leave than Mys­tar. One as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er of po­lice had 28 months (562 work­ing days), while a se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent had 25 months (514 work­ing days), the post stat­ed.

The ti­tle of the post asked if Mys­tar was be­ing tar­get­ed. In the post, the blog­ger stat­ed that she in­quired in­to Mys­tar’s well-be­ing and per­for­mance at his job and was told by peers that Mys­tar ap­peared to be nor­mal when per­form­ing his du­ties and fil­ing re­ports on time.

Gue­var­ro said there was a rea­son the “not so anony­mous” source chose a so­cial me­dia plat­form, as the recog­nised and rep­utable me­dia hous­es, those with ed­i­to­r­i­al stan­dards and a con­science, did not give this kind of reck­less spec­u­la­tion the light of day.

“I say to you that trad­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al con­fi­den­tial­i­ty for a few likes is not jour­nal­ism; it is dig­i­tal gos­sip dressed up as rel­e­vance,” he said.

The com­mis­sion­er told mem­bers of the TTPS that their du­ty is not to in­dulge in the­atrics or so­cial me­dia sen­sa­tion­al­ism.

“Com­men­tary with­out con­text and crit­i­cism with­out facts do noth­ing to strength­en our in­sti­tu­tions; they on­ly erode pub­lic trust,” he said.

Gue­var­ro said he re­mains com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy, fair­ness, and the wel­fare of every of­fi­cer, but he will not tol­er­ate at­tempts to un­der­mine the TTPS.