A close rel­a­tive of for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, who is al­so a po­lice of­fi­cer, was de­tained by of­fi­cers of the Or­gan­ised Crime and In­tel­li­gence Unit (OCIU) on Fri­day.

Sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion told Guardian Me­dia that Williams’ rel­a­tive and an­oth­er 39-year-old po­lice con­sta­ble were held by the OCIU at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion mo­ments af­ter both re­turned from the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trate’s Court.

Se­nior po­lice sources con­firmed that the lock­ers of both men were searched at the po­lice sta­tion and lat­er their homes be­fore they were tak­en to a po­lice sta­tion in Port-of-Spain.

Their cel­lu­lar phones have al­so been seized by of­fi­cers of OCIU, po­lice said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that ap­prox­i­mate­ly four days ago mem­bers of an Arou­ca-based gang were tak­en in­to cus­tody by the OCIU. Dur­ing in­ter­ro­ga­tion they gave cer­tain in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said.

Se­nior sources told Guardian Me­dia that over the last few months sev­er­al po­lice of­fi­cers have been un­der sur­veil­lance for al­leged­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty around the coun­try.

One high-rank­ing source re­vealed, “This op­er­a­tion is on­go­ing and that is much as I can say as it re­lates to this mat­ter.”

Williams con­firmed that his rel­a­tive had been held by po­lice in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

“Yes I un­der­stand so,” he said.

When asked if he knew why his rel­a­tive had been de­tained, he said, “I don’t know. I did not speak with him and I did not vis­it him and that is as much as I can say.”

In Sep­tem­ber 2017 the Or­gan­ised Crime and Nar­cotics Firearms Bu­reau (OC­NFB) and the Crime Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit (CGIU) were merged to form the OCIU. Then act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Harold Phillip said the unit’s man­date was to “dis­man­tle, dis­rupt, sup­press and pros­e­cute mem­bers of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal groups which have over time arranged them­selves in­to or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works.”

In Ju­ly 2018, the two sons of Phillip were ar­rest­ed and charged for the pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing and that mat­ter is still pend­ing be­fore the court.

In 2016, the son of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice De­o­dat Du­lachan was or­dered to do 100 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice on a con­vic­tion of dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol.