PS: Senior police recommended Sagramsingh leave

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment says the rec­om­men­da­tion to place the head of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave came from a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer, not from any po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tive.

Al­though the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS) forms part of the broad­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work, it falls un­der the re­mit of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry. As such, its head, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Sur­ren­dra Sagram­s­ingh, re­ports di­rect­ly to Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Mitchell.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked Mitchell about the process to send an of­fi­cer of Sagram­s­ingh’s rank on leave.

“I nor­mal­ly get rep­re­sen­ta­tion made by oth­er en­ti­ties, ei­ther the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or from the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al or some­thing like that. If cer­tain things are to be done, I have my le­gal peo­ple re­view it.”

Asked who made the rec­om­men­da­tion in Sagram­s­ingh’s case, Mitchell would on­ly say, “A se­nior law en­force­ment of­fi­cer.”

He po­lite­ly de­clined to name the of­fi­cer.

He added, “Be­cause, as you know, Mr Sagram­s­ingh is the high­est-rank­ing mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer, al­though he’s on con­tract. He’s the As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. That’s why I’m say­ing a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial.”

Asked di­rect­ly if any rec­om­men­da­tion came from line min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen, Mitchell said no.

ACP Sagram­s­ingh is the fa­ther of for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal. She con­test­ed the St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy in the last gen­er­al elec­tion but was de­feat­ed by Ameen.

Guardian Me­dia asked if there was any con­sid­er­a­tion to keep ACP Sagram­s­ingh on to help as­sist and co­or­di­nate the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, giv­en his ex­per­tise in the TTMPS.

“It’s at a stage where I don’t want to com­ment on it. The TTPS is tak­ing a lead on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and they felt cer­tain ac­tion need­ed to be tak­en in a cer­tain way. Be­cause I re­ly on in­for­ma­tion from the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on how to pro­ceed go­ing for­ward.”

Asked who will lead the TTMPS in the in­ter­im, Mitchell replied, “Right now, we have two oth­er se­nior su­per­in­ten­dents, and usu­al­ly one of them han­dles ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly. And, I think an­nounce­ment will be made in due course in terms of whether or not we will put some­one else to be the of­fi­cer in charge. Be­cause as you know, the ACP of­fice right now, the of­fice of the ACP right now is a con­tract po­si­tion. So, you can’t re­al­ly put some­body in that po­si­tion un­til it is va­cant.”