An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A re­as­sign­ment of ex­ec­u­tive port­fo­lios by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day sent shock­waves through­out the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), leav­ing both se­nior and ju­nior of­fi­cers stunned by the ac­tion.

In the sur­prise ac­tion, Gue­var­ro sent As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), Cen­tral and South-West Di­vi­sions, Wayne Mys­tar, on 16 months ac­crued va­ca­tion leave, ef­fec­tive Mon­day, and trans­ferred Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (DCP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin, Suzette Mar­tin and Natasha George to new port­fo­lios.

Ben­jamin was moved from Op­er­a­tions to Ad­min­is­tra­tion; Mar­tin from In­tel­li­gence to Op­er­a­tions; and George from Ad­min­is­tra­tion to In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions.

How­ev­er, apart from the trans­fers, ques­tions are now be­ing asked about why Mys­tar was sent on leave in the heart of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Mys­tar’s let­ter, which was signed by Gue­var­ro, did not pro­vide a rea­son for the di­rec­tive. Leave for all of­fi­cers has been re­strict­ed for both ju­nior and se­nior of­fi­cers dur­ing the on­go­ing SoE.

A source al­so re­vealed that George pre­sent­ed Mys­tar with his let­ter in one of her last acts in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion port­fo­lio.

Guardian Me­dia learned that it was on­ly yes­ter­day that Mys­tar vis­it­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) to sign up to un­der­go a poly­graph test, as part of the as­sess­ment which would have en­abled him to act as DCP if any of the three cur­rent DCPs had to pro­ceed on leave.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Ben­jamin, Mar­tin and George were al­so on­ly hand­ed their let­ters of trans­fer yes­ter­day morn­ing and had no pri­or no­tice that a shake­up was com­ing.

Calls to Ben­jamin, George and Mar­tin went unan­swered yes­ter­day, and they did not re­spond to What­sApp mes­sages up to press time.

Ef­forts to con­tact CoP Gue­var­ro were al­so un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.

Guardian Me­dia was told that Gue­var­ro has the au­thor­i­ty to rec­om­mend re­as­sign­ment and va­ca­tion leave of se­nior of­fi­cers with­out hav­ing to seek the in­put of the PolSC.

But the sur­prise an­nounce­ments have led to at least one se­nior of­fi­cer ask­ing, “How could a woman who was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for lock­ing up the for­mer com­mis­sion­er be al­lowed to re­main at work in a se­nior post, yet an ACP whose track record can be proven has been sent on leave with­out a rea­son? Why have no oth­er ACPs been sent on leave?”

A se­nior of­fi­cer af­fect­ed by the re­as­sign­ments sim­ply said, “Life is about changes. One must be able to adapt and per­haps they are see­ing some­thing we are not.”

An­oth­er af­fect­ed by the shift sought to ex­plain the ra­tio­nale, say­ing, “All DCPs must op­er­ate in all ar­eas and have to ac­count to the PolSC, so this is there­fore a good idea.

“Change is nev­er al­ways a nice thing but we have to see it as a pos­i­tive move to de­vel­op the ser­vice. It is not an in­dict­ment on any­one but a thrust to en­sure op­er­a­tions are holis­ti­cal­ly de­vel­oped.”

Asked if they be­lieve mem­bers of the TTPS hi­er­ar­chy were sup­port­ive of the ex­ec­u­tive changes, one hes­i­tant­ly said, “Time will tell. This is about im­prov­ing the TTPS and the CoP is the cap­tain of the team. The role of the play­ers is to sup­port wher­ev­er they are placed in the field.”

The de­ci­sion comes days af­ter Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ad­vised se­nior of­fi­cers to set aside their dif­fer­ences and work with Gue­var­ro – or get out of ser­vice if they felt they could no longer do the job.

Alexan­der made the com­ment dur­ing a pass­ing-out pa­rade at the St James Bar­racks, telling of­fi­cers, “There is no ap­pli­ca­tion for Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, so there is no rea­son to feel hurt that you did not get through with the job.”

Even as he urged them to ac­cept that the race for top cop had al­ready been won, he in­sist­ed, “Just do the job or get out and let some­body else do the job.”

At the time, Alexan­der hint­ed at ten­sions among the hi­er­ar­chy, as he said, “You can­not go for­ward in an in­sti­tu­tion where you are fight­ing each oth­er. You are not lov­ing each oth­er. You are not sup­port­ing each oth­er.”

The min­is­ter lat­er de­nied he was di­rect­ing the warn­ings to any par­tic­u­lar of­fi­cer, and in­sist­ed his on­ly ob­jec­tive had been to en­cour­age all of­fi­cers to recom­mit to the job.