Geisha Kow­lessar

Im­me­di­ate­ly up­on his re­turn to the coun­try to­mor­row Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs must pro­vide a full ex­pla­na­tion to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and the coun­try as to why he took it up­on him­self to con­tract a light sport air­craft to as­sist in crime-fight­ing with­out con­sul­ta­tion from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy. The de­ci­sion to keep the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry in the dark, ac­cord­ing to Sandy, re­flect­ed an in­stance where the top cop was "ill-ad­vised." On Tues­day Sandy in­sist­ed Gibbs, as the fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er for the Po­lice Ser­vice, could ex­er­cise his dis­cre­tion and to sanc­tion deals for the ser­vice amount­ing to less than $1 mil­lion. Gibbs and Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams are at­tend­ing a law en­force­ment course in the Unit­ed King­dom, leav­ing Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki to act as the top cop.

But a tough-talk­ing Sandy in­sist­ed yes­ter­day Gibbs must ac­count for his ac­tions, charg­ing he was dis­ap­point­ed he took it up­on him­self to leave out the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process to con­tract the plane. He added: "I would not say that Mr Gibbs was wrong I would say he was ill-ad­vised. "Mr Gibbs prob­a­bly felt this is some­thing on a tri­al ba­sis and not some­thing that we are def­i­nite­ly not go­ing to pur­chase... every­thing would be de­pend­ing on how it works as I sus­pect very much he felt that, 'okay I can go ahead with this,'" Sandy said. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter was speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter a hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny of ICT equip­ment to var­i­ous Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) at the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme, Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James. Asked if he be­lieved Gibbs' fail­ure to con­sult with his min­istry was a clear in­di­ca­tion the top cop act­ed gross­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble and there­fore should be fired, Sandy, with­out in­di­cat­ing his sup­port or not, left that de­ci­sion in the hands of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

He said: "That is a de­ci­sion for the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and I would not want to make any pub­lic pro­nounce­ments that would in­flu­ence their think­ing." Say­ing he did not be­lieve Gibbs act­ed in an "un­der­hand­ed man­ner" Sandy, how­ev­er, ex­pressed con­cern that Gibbs was ill-ad­vised when he de­cid­ed to spend $902,772 to lease the plane for a three-month pi­lot project. And an­oth­er is­sue of con­cern raised by Sandy was that his min­istry could have an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives on stream which would could have clashed with Gibbs' plan. He said: "I am dis­ap­point­ed that we were left out, not so much in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing as­pect of it be­cause I feel that if they are go­ing with that well then the least they should have done was to alert the min­is­ter, alert the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil be­cause there could have been the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the min­is­ter could have been look­ing at oth­er av­enues to deal with that some­thing and it could have been that we could have been du­pli­cat­ing the ef­fort."

He said he re­ceived a re­port from act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki which ex­plained the con­tract­ing of the air­craft was on a trail ba­sis. Ac­cord­ing to Sandy, based on the re­port there was "noth­ing un­der­hand­ed" com­mit­ted by Gibbs but it was rather a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple and due re­spect which was not demon­strat­ed by Gibbs when he de­cid­ed to con­tract the air­craft. He added: "I main­tain that some­thing of this na­ture, which is na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as­sets, this is some­thing which should have been shared with me "What was ex­plained in the re­port was this was on a tri­al pe­ri­od for 12 weeks and it is not a sit­u­a­tion where the air­craft was be­ing pur­chased or be­ing leased for any ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od." An­oth­er con­cern which the min­is­ter al­so sought to clear were con­cerns raised re­gard­ing the cost of the air­craft.

He said: "It was said that the cost of leas­ing it for 12 weeks was more than the air­craft it­self which is not true. "I was told that the cost of the air­craft was in ex­cess of US $250,000." Asked whether he be­lieved, for the pur­pose of trans­paren­cy, that the en­tire deal should be scrapped and reini­ti­at­ed, Sandy said that could not oc­cur since the con­tract al­ready was signed. Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter, Gary Grif­fith, on Tues­day ad­mit­ted he viewed a pre­sen­ta­tion of the light sport air­craft by Navi-Comm Avion­ics Ltd at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter around the mid­dle of last year. Ques­tioned whether there was any com­mu­ni­ca­tion to his min­istry or to him di­rect­ly from Grif­fith re­gard­ing this Sandy said there was none of the sort. The ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the air­craft was al­so brought to the fore but when ques­tioned about its use in an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives Sandy passed the buck to the Po­lice Ser­vice.

"All that would be shared by the po­lice in due course. They have in­di­cat­ed that it has done sur­veil­lance work and the sur­veil­lance work that it has done has re­sult­ed in ar­rests and con­vic­tions of per­sons," Sandy said. On Fri­day in Par­lia­ment, Op­po­si­tion MP Don­na Cox read a let­ter, writ­ten in Sep­tem­ber last year by Gibbs, in which he stat­ed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry had award­ed a $902,772 con­tract to a Tacarigua firm for 720 hours of use of the Zenith air­craft for a three-month eval­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Sup­port Com­pa­ny Ltd Dirk Barnes said he had doc­u­ments, which he sent to the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty prov­ing his Zenith CH 750 Air Scout air­craft came in­to T&T this month. He fur­ther claimed he knew noth­ing about the air­craft re­ferred to in e-mails writ­ten last Ju­ly and re­vealed in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

The com­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to meet to­day to dis­cuss the is­sue of the air­craft.