Death threats against CoP

An­na-Lisa Paul

& Shane Su­perville

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is stand­ing de­fi­ant in the face of death threats from the crim­i­nal el­e­ments di­rect­ed at him and his fam­i­ly, in­sist­ing he will not al­low “cow­ard­ly” acts of in­tim­i­da­tion to de­ter him from hunt­ing down the crim­i­nals.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions re­lat­ing to a re­port­ed threat that if the crim­i­nal el­e­ments were un­able to get to him – they would in­stead go af­ter his two daugh­ters, Gue­var­ro la­belled the threats, “A cow­ardice act.”

The lat­est threat was re­ceived by a po­lice con­sta­ble via the 999 hot­line at 9.27 pm on Sat­ur­day (Ju­ly 11). It claimed: “Boss­es and them want to come out­side. It have too much f@##ing boss­es in­side and if they don’t come out, If we can’t get to him, we will get to his f@##ing chil­dren. We know he have a big daugh­ter and a small daugh(ter).”

Re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to the threats, Gue­var­ro said, “That is cow­ard­ly. Come af­ter me all you want.

“But to threat­en me to leave the boss­es or they will come af­ter my daugh­ters…I want them to know that Gopaul luck is not Seep­aul luck.”

Gue­var­ro, not­ing that he is not pre­pared to back down from do­ing what needs to be done, in­clud­ing putting peo­ple con­sid­ered to be “un­touch­ables” be­hind bars, al­so warned, “Same rain does fall on every­one’s roof.”

While he re­frained from say­ing much else, the top cop reaf­firmed his com­mit­ment to the job, re­peat­ing the oath he swore on the day he was in­stalled as CoP.

Stand­ing be­hind the CoP yes­ter­day, ready to de­fend and car­ry out all law­ful and le­gal in­struc­tions, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Richard Smith said the of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) would not be cowed or threat­ened in­to, “turn­ing the oth­er cheek by il­le­gal en­ti­ties in­tent on cre­at­ing chaos and in­still­ing fear in those who are fear­less­ly do­ing their job.”

Con­cerned and an­gered over the threats al­so aimed at Gue­var­ro’s chil­dren, Smith al­so dis­missed claims that a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) had been sought for a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial, who it was be­ing claimed was cor­rupt and had close links to sev­er­al un­der­world fac­tions whose op­er­a­tions had been in­ter­rupt­ed with the ar­rest of sev­er­al of their agents/af­fil­i­ates.

He said, “Claims that this of­fi­cer had fled the coun­try are er­ro­neous.”

Smith ac­cused cer­tain peo­ple with “hid­den agen­das” of at­tempt­ing to cre­ate mis­chief fol­low­ing claims that this of­fi­cer was, in fact, the per­son re­spon­si­ble for is­su­ing threats to Gue­var­ro and his fam­i­ly.

“I can as­sure you that the com­mis­sion­er will con­tin­ue to do his job with­out fear or favour,” Smith said, adding that the ex­ec­u­tive of the TTPS was stand­ing firm­ly be­hind Gue­var­ro.

Mean­while, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der al­so con­firmed that he was aware of the threats is­sued to the CoP and his fam­i­ly yes­ter­day.

“The com­mis­sion­er and I, we speak on a dai­ly ba­sis, just like in any oth­er in­sti­tu­tion for which I’m the line min­is­ter,” Alexan­der said dur­ing an event he host­ed for youths in his Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy.

“We spoke and what I can say is the in­for­ma­tion seems to be very cred­i­ble. I have a lot of con­fi­dence in the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. He knows what to do and what an­gle to take this.”

He added, “This is why I was telling per­sons be­fore. What I was try­ing to ex­plain to them is every time we get in Par­lia­ment and give the in­for­ma­tion as to the threats that are com­ing to min­is­ters et cetera, peo­ple out­side there are chang­ing the game.

“So, if I say, ‘A threat is com­ing with a box in Par­lia­ment,’ are you still go­ing to use a box?

“So, the in­for­ma­tion keeps com­ing, I have a lot of con­fi­dence in the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his team. He has my full sup­port of his ac­tions once it is with­in the frame­work of the law.”