Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty leader Phillip Alexan­der has asked Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to open an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the is­suance of Firearms User’s Li­cences (FULs).

Alexan­der did so via a let­ter yes­ter­day af­ter Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal pro­vid­ed al­leged What­sApp mes­sages pur­port­ed­ly show­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds seek­ing for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith’s help to get FULs for his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail in 2021. Alexan­der called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to “al­le­ga­tions and counter al­le­ga­tions” on the is­sue.

Alexan­der’s of­fi­cial re­quest to Hare­wood-Christo­pher stat­ed, “The ev­i­dence leaked to the me­dia de­mand scruti­ny as to what ex­act­ly oc­curred, and most im­por­tant­ly, did the per­sons re­ferred ac­tu­al­ly re­ceive pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for FUL ap­pli­ca­tions and li­cences de­spite not be­ing ad­e­quate­ly processed as the law pre­scribes.”

The let­ter raised ques­tions about the al­leged ac­tions of Hinds and Grif­fith and their be­hav­iour.

“I urge you to con­duct this in­ves­ti­ga­tion dili­gent­ly and im­par­tial­ly to up­hold the in­tegri­ty of our law en­force­ment in­sti­tu­tions,” the let­ter added.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Grif­fith said the let­ter was an at­tempt by Alexan­der to be rel­e­vant.

“I com­ment in re­la­tion to rel­e­vant top­ics. Not ir­rel­e­vant peo­ple try­ing to be rel­e­vant by al­ways talk­ing about me. This shows (Alexan­der’s) ig­no­rance of the law. There’s noth­ing for a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate. The on­ly mat­ter of con­cern may be a min­is­ter al­leged­ly say­ing he didn’t do some­thing. But a min­is­ter’s to­tal­ly free to seek an up­date on the sta­tus of a firearm and the CoP has full au­thor­i­ty to grant,” he said.

Min­is­ter Hinds did not re­spond to ques­tions by Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue.