Geisha Kow­lessar

The is­sue of al­leged gang leader Ken­neth "Span­ish" Ro­driguez be­ing award­ed a $2 mil­lion con­tract to build the Dun­can Street po­lice post took on a new twist yes­ter­day, af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan warned the Po­lice Ser­vice to "stop pass­ing the buck" and in­stead ar­rest gang lead­ers it claims to have in­for­ma­tion on.Fur­ther, Ram­lo­gan said the black­list­ing of al­leged gang lead­ers and mem­bers from ac­quir­ing gov­ern­ment con­tracts could present prob­lems for the State, as this could lead to an in­crease in crime and mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars be­ing spent to de­fend dis­crim­i­na­to­ry law­suits."If these peo­ple do not get work, what will they do and how will they live? Will it re­sult in a fur­ther spike in the crime as­sum­ing you are cor­rect in the brand­ing in the first place," Ram­lo­gan said at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair.

An­oth­er is­sue, he warned, was the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the State be­ing sued by pur­port­ed gang mem­bers and lead­ers if there was no ev­i­dence to prove their in­volve­ment in crime. Ram­lo­gan said if a list of the names of these in­di­vid­u­als was cir­cu­lat­ed "with­out" hav­ing the ev­i­dence to charge and pros­e­cute them, this would be detri­men­tal to the State."I, as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, would have a very grave con­cern which I must frankly share with the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice," he said."If you brand these in­di­vid­u­als by pub­lish­ing their names and pic­tures in the ab­sence of co­gent, clear and com­pelling ev­i­dence that is ad­mis­si­ble on be­half of the pros­e­cu­tion in a court of law, then all of these per­sons will come to sue the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the State for defama­tion of char­ac­ter and dis­crim­i­na­tion and breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment and equal­i­ty and pro­tec­tion of the law."

He high­light­ed the ar­rests of 21 res­i­dents of Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain, dur­ing the state of emer­gency in 2011. The men, Ram­lo­gan said, were freed af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard told Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against them to sus­tain the charges.Ram­lo­gan said if they were tar­get­ed un­fair­ly, such in­di­vid­u­als could al­so seek re­dress by go­ing to the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion to file a com­plaint about the in­equal­i­ty of treat­ment "by a high state func­tionary, name­ly the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice."

"The com­mis­sion­er of po­lice can­not pass the buck for fight­ing crime," he said."The Gov­ern­ment can­not put hand­cuffs on any cit­i­zen and we can­not in­ves­ti­gate any crime. That is the func­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice." Ram­lo­gan's com­ments came a day af­ter Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John de­nied Ro­driguez was ei­ther a con­trac­tor or sub-con­trac­tor on the po­lice post.Last Fri­day, how­ev­er, Ro­driguez had fea­tured promi­nent­ly on a tour of the project with John, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams. He sub­se­quent­ly ad­dressed mem­bers of the me­dia at the as­sign­ment and de­nied claims be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed that a gang leader had been award­ed the con­tract. He said he was a com­mu­ni­ty leader who owned his own con­struc­tion com­pa­ny and was a hard work­er.

But at the launch of an an­ti-bul­ly­ing cam­paign on Tues­day, Williams told mem­bers of the me­dia the po­lice had in­tel­li­gence Ro­driguez was in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ty and had passed on this in­for­ma­tion to the Gov­ern­ment. Yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan said this was not enough."The ob­vi­ous ques­tion is if the po­lice know who the gang lead­ers and the gang mem­bers are, why is it they are not be­hind bars and why is it they are not be­ing charged with cred­i­ble ev­i­dence so that they can be pros­e­cut­ed and put be­hind bars?" he said."If the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice knows who the gang lead­ers are, then they must go and put hand­cuffs on them and the Gov­ern­ment will ap­plaud them and the Gov­ern­ment will salute them and the peo­ple of this coun­try will pay trib­ute to them."

He said in the ab­sence of that ev­i­dence, he would "urge cau­tion" to Williams be­fore he made "such sweep­ing state­ments and putting it in the frame­work and man­ner that he (Williams) has, as it could lead to an avalanche of lit­i­ga­tion against the State."Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion re­mained "clear," Ram­lo­gan said if there was ev­i­dence of gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty or "gang mem­ber­ship" in­volved in any facet of "pub­lic or pri­vate life," then the Po­lice Ser­vice must ar­rest or pros­e­cute."That is the po­si­tion when we as­sumed of­fice, it re­mains a po­si­tion to­day and it will nev­er change," Ram­lo­gan added.

No one en­ti­tled to con­tracts

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said the grant­i­ng of gov­ern­ment con­tracts was not an "en­ti­tle­ment" to any­one. How­ev­er, he re­it­er­at­ed his in­ten­tion to root out crim­i­nal el­e­ments from state con­tracts.Draw­ing ref­er­ence to the Unit­ed States visa sys­tem, Grif­fith said not every­one was guar­an­teed a visa as there were var­i­ous in­tel­li­gence agen­cies who gath­ered in­for­ma­tion on peo­ple which were then passed on and scru­ti­nised be­fore a visa was award­ed."The US gov­ern­ment has its own watch­list, for ex­am­ple those sus­pect­ed of be­ing ter­ror­ists and oth­er crim­i­nals, and they cer­tain­ly do not give out visas to each and every­body," he said."So the award­ing of a con­tract cer­tain­ly is not an en­ti­tle­ment to any­one. What I in­tend to do is get the names of those who are gang lead­ers and gang mem­bers and pass them out to the rel­e­vant agen­cies so they would be aware of this, es­pe­cial­ly where the award­ing of con­tracts was con­cerned."Williams said yes­ter­day that he had not heard Ram­lo­gan's com­ments and there­fore could not com­ment.