Panday wants probe of police killings

Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday has urged Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert "to urgently and emphatically refute the perception of an institutionalised cover-up in the circumstances surrounding the police killing of five people in Wallerfield in August last year".

"The reports surrounding this matter suggest that there are gangs of rogue policemen operating in the Police Service or that there is an official police hit-squad. Neither of these possibilities sits comfortably with the Opposition UNC or the public at large," Panday said in a media release.

"Further, there are reports that crucial evidence in the alleged murder of the five victims has been stolen and now the matter is in limbo where the file is sitting down collecting dust," he added.

Panday was responding to an article in Monday's Trinidad Express that said a Special Branch report into the shooting incident had been ignored and that so far an inquest into the incident has stalled.

The paper said the Special Branch has found a link between a senior police officer, who handpicked the officers involved in the incident, and murdered Arima drug queen Lily Layne. Wendy Courtney, 40, was killed in her bedroom by a stray bullet.

Police later shot and killed four men - Jordan Charles, Lincoln Forde Hayden Goddard and Glen Liverpool inside a car. The report said police shot at the vehicle because they believed that Lily's killer, Shawn "Sawood" Allen, was in the car.

Read the Express story: Fatal blunder

Panday said Philbert is accountable for the police failure to conclude a thorough investigation. "He is also accountable for the disappearance of evidence even if it is done by some rogue element. So the Police Commissioner must find out which police officers are stalling this investigation and he must take strong action against them in the first instance. Secondly, this investigation must be completed swiftly in the interest of justice."

He wondered why the Government has "done nothing to stamp out corruption and rogue officers from the Police Service," adding that this would only add to the public's perception of an ineffective police service.

"Public confidence in the police service is already weak and this incident will undermine it further. It is important for the commissioner to convincingly dispel the perceptions that have arisen so far based on the facts and evidence presented to the public," Panday said.

The former prime minister also drew attention to a proposal his party made two years ago to establish an independent anti-corruption bureau to investigate all allegations of corruption involving politicians, public officials and statutory bodies.

"Police officers would have been subject to the scrutiny of this bureau, and that bureau would have had the power and ability to uncover activities such as improper links between police officers and drug traffickers, gun trading and murder as is being alleged in this incident," he said.