Ex-CoP: Ministry ordered Brent Thomas’ removal from Barbados

Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

For­mer ac­tu­ing com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob says it was the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, through its Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime Unit (TOCU), which grant­ed ap­proval for four mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to trav­el to Bar­ba­dos to bring firearms deal­er Brent Thomas to T&T on Oc­to­ber 5, 2022.

With­out iden­ti­fy­ing an in­di­vid­ual, Ja­cob said it could on­ly have been done by the lead­er­ship of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty - ei­ther the min­is­ter, who at the time was Fitzger­ald Hinds, or the min­istry’s ac­count­ing of­fi­cer, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary.

Ja­cob said it was TOCU, a unit which works close­ly with the US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, which arranged for a Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) air­craft to be used in the mis­sion.

His role, he told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, was sim­ply that of a “rub­ber stamp.”

The file, which would have con­tained these de­tails, has gone miss­ing from the min­istry, ac­cord­ing to De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge.

The de­tails, though, were con­tained in a con­fi­den­tial af­fi­davit which Ja­cob did on the Thomas af­fair and which was leaked yes­ter­day on so­cial me­dia. Ja­cob said he raised con­cerns with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro about the leak.

Ja­cob told Guardian Me­dia that as com­mis­sion­er, he had a dai­ly call with the then min­is­ter, Fitzger­ald Hinds, at 8 am. He said fol­low­ing Thomas’ re­turn on Oc­to­ber 5, he con­tin­ued to have his dai­ly calls with Hinds un­til he left of­fice two months lat­er.

Ac­cord­ing to Ja­cob’s af­fi­davit, in ear­ly 2021, while in his role as DCP (In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions), he was privy to da­ta from the E-Trace sys­tem, em­a­nat­ing from the US Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearm and Ex­plo­sives (AFT) based in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, which showed that sev­er­al firearms re­cov­ered by the TTPS were in the hands of li­cenced firearms deal­ers in T&T.

At the time, he ap­point­ed ASP Lan­cast­er-El­lis to spear­head a team from the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID) to con­duct an in­ter­nal au­dit of the records of the TTPS’s Firearm Sec­tion. He said through the au­dit, the records of sev­er­al firearms were ver­i­fied, with 31 be­ing un­ver­i­fied. As a re­sult, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was widened to en­com­pass the in­spec­tion of the records of the firearm deal­ers, more par­tic­u­lar­ly those iden­ti­fied through the ATF data­base.

Around that time, he said for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad com­mis­sioned re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Stan­ley John to con­duct an in­quiry in­to the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the is­suance of Firearm Users Li­cences (FULs) by the TTPS. He not­ed that the re­port was sub­mit­ted on No­vem­ber 24, 2021, to then PolSC chair­man Ju­dith Jones but he had al­so man­dat­ed a sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) head­ed by then Su­per­in­ten­dent Suzette Mar­tin and the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch, head­ed by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Wen­dell Lu­cas. He then merged the teams - CID and PSB - to avoid du­plic­i­ty and man­pow­er is­sues.

Ja­cob not­ed that pri­or to this, in Au­gust 2021, Sgt Matthew Hay­wood ar­rest­ed a civil­ian, Ted­dy Philip, and was en­gaged in in­ves­ti­ga­tions which in­volved firearms deal­er Brent Thomas, and he was merged in­to that team.

He said on Oc­to­ber 2, Mar­tin con­tact­ed him, in­di­cat­ing that Thomas had plans to flee the ju­ris­dic­tion.

For con­text, pri­or to this, on Sep­tem­ber 29, Thomas was ar­rest­ed by po­lice and was re­leased by po­lice on Oc­to­ber 2.

Ja­cob said when Mar­tin in­formed him of her in­tel­li­gence, he ad­vised her to con­tact the Spe­cial In­ves­tiga­tive Unit for sur­veil­lance, as well as George Laldeo, head of TOCU, for fur­ther as­sis­tance.

On Oc­to­ber 3, Thomas trav­elled to Bar­ba­dos en route to the US for med­ical check-ups.

Ja­cob said on Oc­to­ber 3, Mar­tin con­tact­ed him in­di­cat­ing Thomas had elud­ed sur­veil­lance and she had fur­ther in­for­ma­tion that “he in­tend­ed to flee the coun­try.”

Ja­cob said on Oc­to­ber 5, Laldeo vis­it­ed his of­fice.

“He in­formed me that he had in­for­ma­tion that Brent Thomas was al­ready in Bar­ba­dos and had vol­un­teered to re­turn to Trinidad, thus negat­ing the pro­ce­dure un­der the Process of Ex­tra­di­tion. He al­so in­formed me that he had made arrange­ments through the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty with the Joint Re­gion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Cen­tre (JR­CC) and Cari­com Im­pact to fa­cil­i­tate his re­turn,” Ja­cob swore un­der oath.

He said when he spoke to Mar­tin, with Laldeo present, she en­gaged the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and ob­tained ad­vice on six war­rants for Thomas. Mar­tin told Ja­cob that Thomas in­tend­ed to trav­el to Greece, a place where T&T had no ex­tra­di­tion treaty.

He was told by Laldeo that “the method they were us­ing to se­cure the re­turn of Brent Thomas was cus­tom­ary, once the per­son had vol­un­teered to re­turn.”

He said Mar­tin “con­firmed that the Bar­ba­dos po­lice had in­di­cat­ed Mr Thomas’ vol­un­tari­ness to re­turn and the method was used in the past in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.”

He said at the re­quest of Laldeo, he signed doc­u­ments for Laldeo, Mar­tin, ASP Nigel Brich and Cor­po­ral Joe­field to leave the coun­try for the sole pur­pose of re­turn­ing Thomas on the grounds that the TTPS had six war­rants for his ar­rest, cou­pled with the fact of his will­ing­ness to re­turn to Trinidad.

Ja­cob said they were to trav­el to Bar­ba­dos on the RSS plane and would not ex­it, but would col­lect Thomas on the tar­mac of the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

He said on Oc­to­ber 6, Mar­tin sub­mit­ted a re­port on the mat­ter with ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said on Oc­to­ber 14, 2022, he left the coun­try on po­lice busi­ness and sub­se­quent­ly demit­ted of­fice on De­cem­ber 6, 2022.

The af­fi­davit was dat­ed Ju­ly 18, 2025.

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is again call­ing for a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the mat­ter, fol­low­ing re­ports that the State’s file re­lat­ing to mat­ter has gone miss­ing.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said a CoE may be the on­ly way to de­ter­mine what led to Thomas’ ar­rest and what hap­pened to the miss­ing file.

“In this sit­u­a­tion with Brent Thomas, there’s no oth­er choice. Just by the doc­u­ments miss­ing all of a sud­den and you can’t find it, that is ex­act­ly what is go­ing to hap­pen. This is a mas­sive cov­er-up, and it is not just about the po­lice cov­er­ing up,” Grif­fith said.

He ar­gued that the is­sue point­ed to a se­ri­ous break­down in over­sight and main­tained that on­ly an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion could en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“So, the on­ly way that per­sons can be brought to jus­tice is through a com­mis­sion of in­quiry where the in­for­ma­tion can­not be hid­den. The sec­ond is to pre­vent a re­peat. Be­cause yes­ter­day could be Brent Thomas, to­day, to­mor­row could be you, it could be any cit­i­zen of this coun­try,” he said.