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Monday, July 7, 2025

Shake-up at Special Branch

by

2867 days ago
20170831

KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has made a ma­jor shake-up in its op­er­a­tion this week, with act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams re­mov­ing Spe­cial Branch head ACP Ains­ley Gar­rick and his deputy Snr Supt Austin Lee.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that Gar­rick was sent on va­ca­tion leave while Lee was trans­ferred to the South West­ern Di­vi­sion, where he was ex­pect­ed to take over from Snr Supt In­raj Bal­ram.

A se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial said the changes are com­ing af­ter is­sues were raised over the Spe­cial Branch's counter-ter­ror­ism ef­forts at a re­cent Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) meet­ing. The of­fi­cial said the de­ci­sion may have been made in an­tic­i­pa­tion of Mon­day’s NSC meet­ing. How­ev­er, sources with­in the TTPS said they be­lieve the changes may be po­lit­i­cal in­flu­enced.

Last Jan­u­ary, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty con­firmed it was work­ing close­ly with the Unit­ed States, Britain and Cana­da on in­tel­li­gence and in­for­ma­tion shar­ing on peo­ple who were found to be as­so­ci­at­ed with any ter­ror­ist group, whether lo­cal­ly or in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Sev­er­al calls made to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams be­tween Tues­day and Wednes­day were un­suc­cess­ful as he did not re­turn them nor did he re­spond to voice mes­sages.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue, TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Ellen Lewis did not share any in­for­ma­tion on why Gar­rick and Lee were re­moved and where they were re­as­signed. How­ev­er, she did say that all man­pow­er place­ments were nor­mal prac­tice and done at the dis­cre­tion of Williams.

“The as­sign­ment, re­as­sign­ment or trans­fer of any of­fi­cer oc­curs from time to time is an ad­min­is­tra­tive prac­tice with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. It is the pre­rog­a­tive of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to as­sign of­fi­cers un­der his com­mand as he deems ap­pro­pri­ate to en­sure ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness in the man­age­ment of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Lewis said.

But sec­re­tary of the T&T Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, act­ing ASP Anand Rame­sar, said from their point of view the changes seem un­usu­al.

“You don’t nor­mal­ly see a trans­fer like this tak­ing place in re­la­tion to a de­part­ment like the Spe­cial Branch. How­ev­er, it is some­times good to note that the days of the sa­cred cows, where peo­ple feel they can’t get trans­ferred be­cause of where they work, is slow­ly erod­ing," Rame­sar said.

Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the Spe­cial Branch in­clude in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and pro­cess­ing, con­duct­ing in­for­ma­tion in­to the ac­tiv­i­ties of for­eign­ers en­ter­ing the coun­try and pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty to the Prime Min­is­ter, Pres­i­dent and oth­er dig­ni­taries.

Ear­li­er this month, the Unit­ed King­dom up­dat­ed its trav­el ad­vi­so­ry to T&T, warn­ing its cit­i­zens of pos­si­ble acts of ter­ror­ism oc­cur­ring in the coun­try. They stat­ed that al­though there were no re­cent at­tacks, more than 100 T&T na­tion­als had trav­elled to Syr­ia and Iraq to fight along with Daesh (for­mer­ly re­ferred to as ISIL) and are like­ly to pose a se­cu­ri­ty threat on re­turn to T&T. They al­so stat­ed that there was al­so a threat from in­di­vid­u­als who may have been in­spired by ter­ror­ist groups, in­clud­ing Daesh and al Qae­da, to car­ry out so-called ‘lone ac­tor’ at­tacks tar­get­ing pub­lic events or places.

Last year, CoP Williams de­scribed the Spe­cial Branch as the “most elite VIP Pro­tec­tion Unit” in T&T.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the ap­pear­ance of "com­mu­ni­ty leader" Cedric “Burkie” Burke at Pres­i­dent's House for the swear­ing-in of Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald as Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter on June 30, Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona or­dered an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether there was a breach of se­cu­ri­ty and pro­to­cols. Car­mona had re­quest­ed a re­port from the Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers on du­ty, es­pe­cial­ly as Burke was not on the list of in­vit­ed guest.


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