An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

New head of the T&T Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS), As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Wayne Mys­tar, says po­lice cor­po­ral Anus­ka Ever­s­ley’s col­leagues are still very trau­ma­tised by her mur­der.

This has forced him to con­tin­ue coun­selling ser­vices for them and to ini­ti­ate rapid in­ter­ven­tion mea­sures in the South­ern Di­vi­sion aimed at im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty and sta­bil­is­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Mys­tar re­vealed yes­ter­day that the mea­sures al­so in­clude in­creas­ing the num­ber of of­fi­cers as­signed to each mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty.

Cred­it­ing the May­or’s Of­fice for fa­cil­i­tat­ing coun­selling and re­lat­ed in­ter­ven­tions, Mys­tar said, “This was very much need­ed, as her friends and col­leagues were dev­as­tat­ed over the sud­den loss and the man­ner in which she died. Since the in­ci­dent, I am find­ing of­fi­cers are sub­mit­ting sick leave cer­tifi­cates as some of them are un­able to func­tion, even when they re­port for work.”

He told Guardian Me­dia that the in­ten­tion is to in­crease the com­ple­ment of of­fi­cers in each mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty to 100 as soon as pos­si­ble. He ex­plained that the ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er would come from the most re­cent batch of re­cruits who grad­u­at­ed from the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Acad­e­my in Mara­bel­la in 2025.

He al­so con­firmed that Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Mo­hammed has been tem­porar­i­ly re­as­signed to the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

Ever­s­ley, 42, was found dead in­side the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion around 4.40 am on April 19. Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery, the sta­tion’s ar­moury was found emp­ty. In­ves­ti­ga­tors from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) have not yet con­firmed how many firearms and how much am­mu­ni­tion were tak­en.

How­ev­er, when Ever­s­ley’s col­league Jivon “Big­gs” Coop­er, 28, ap­peared in court on Mon­day, charged with her mur­der, along­side Kwame Arnold, 20, and Nicholas “Nico” Ram­dass, 24, the court file read that they had al­so been charged with the theft of 114 pis­tols, one re­volver, six shot­guns, two MPX sub­ma­chine guns and 173 firearm mag­a­zines.

Three days lat­er, a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent oc­curred at the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice post at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, where four guns were found to be miss­ing from a safe dur­ing an au­dit. The ASP in charge al­so found a hole at the back of the safe.

While de­clin­ing to com­ment in de­tail on the lat­est dis­cov­ery at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day, Mys­tar said, “Giv­en every­thing that has hap­pened, I am pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to San Fer­nan­do as this is a ma­jor city. I am work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to in­crease the strength at all mu­nic­i­pal po­lice sta­tions, but the bulk of the of­fi­cers will be as­signed to San Fer­nan­do.”

In the wake of the in­ci­dents, mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers have been in­struct­ed to lodge their firearms at po­lice sta­tions to en­sure greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty

TTPS op­ti­mistic about

Mys­tar’s lead­er­ship

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer, act­ing As­sis­tant Supt Owie Rus­sell, ex­pressed con­fi­dence in Mys­tar’s abil­i­ty to lead the or­gan­i­sa­tion through its cur­rent chal­lenges.

“We know that he will do well there,” Rus­sell said.

“He has the ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing worked in the Po­lice Acad­e­my and oth­er ar­eas. As a for­mer di­vi­sion com­man­der, he brings a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and will be able to ap­ply TTPS prin­ci­ples and adapt them to the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice en­vi­ron­ment.”

Rus­sell made the re­marks dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on CNC3’s Po­lice and You seg­ment on The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day.

Rus­sell, who al­so serves as vice-pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA), not­ed that Mys­tar is now re­spon­si­ble for over­see­ing op­er­a­tions across the 14 mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that it took an in­ci­dent like this for stronger trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed, but the pub­lic must un­der­stand that there is a dis­tinc­tion be­tween the func­tions and pow­ers of the TTPS, which fall un­der the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice struc­ture. While the uni­forms may ap­pear sim­i­lar, the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al frame­works are dif­fer­ent,” he said.