Stuart’s security pulled: Govt halts Special Branch detail after axing PM’s pension

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

Twen­ty-four hours af­ter Gov­ern­ment passed leg­is­la­tion to pull for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s prime min­is­te­r­i­al pen­sion, the Cab­i­net al­so pulled his per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Young was in a meet­ing in his con­stituen­cy when of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) Spe­cial Branch re­ceived the call in­di­cat­ing that they were no longer as­signed to Young’s de­tail. The se­cu­ri­ty re­port­ed­ly gave Young a ride home first be­fore wrap­ping up their op­er­a­tions with him.

“Yes, this hap­pened sud­den­ly to­day,” Young said yes­ter­day when con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia.

“I re­ceived a call in­form­ing me that Cab­i­net took a de­ci­sion to pull all se­cu­ri­ty ex­tend­ed to me as a for­mer PM. I was told that the cur­rent Cab­i­net has de­cid­ed to im­me­di­ate­ly end what was be­ing pro­vid­ed to both me and for­mer PM (Kei­th) Row­ley. I re­ceived the no­ti­fi­ca­tion whilst I was see­ing con­stituents at my con­stituen­cy of­fice on of­fice day.”

Young said there was an ex­ist­ing Cab­i­net de­ci­sion, which, he said, ap­plied for decades that pro­vid­ed lim­it­ed se­cu­ri­ty to for­mer prime min­is­ters and pres­i­dents for a pe­ri­od of three months and six months.

A se­nior Cab­i­net of­fi­cial con­firmed the move. They said Young’s de­tail would have end­ed on Ju­ly 28, three months af­ter he demit­ted of­fice af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

How­ev­er, the source said threat as­sess­ments are reg­u­lar­ly con­duct­ed and the lat­est showed there was no need for Young’s de­tail to be con­tin­ued.

“The ex­i­gen­cies of the po­lice ser­vice would re­quire the po­lice to do an as­sess­ment on any in­di­vid­ual and the time would have come that there’s no threats against this in­di­vid­ual,” the source said.

“At that lev­el, ac­cord­ing to the as­sess­ment done, the po­lice of­fi­cers can pull these of­fi­cers from any de­tail and place them back in­to the streets or at­tach them to some­one else.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the move yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Guev­er­ro, when asked to con­firm whether he re­ceived the in­struc­tion from the Gov­ern­ment, said sim­ply, “I can con­firm.”

When asked if he knew about Cab­i­net’s pro­to­col, he said, “I can­not speak to the Cab­i­net’s pro­to­col. How­ev­er, once law­ful di­rec­tives are giv­en, as what oc­curred in this in­stance, I act­ed with promp­ti­tude.”

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley al­so con­firmed yes­ter­day that his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail was pulled “about a week ago.”

Dur­ing his time as Op­po­si­tion Leader, Dr Row­ley’s state se­cu­ri­ty de­tail was re­moved un­der then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter John Sandy and lat­er re­in­stat­ed by min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, who de­cid­ed to pro­vide him with a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail. That de­tail stayed with Row­ley un­til he be­came prime min­is­ter, then he was as­signed a Spe­cial Branch de­tail.

Cer­tain Spe­cial Branch de­tails are specif­i­cal­ly as­signed to the prime min­is­ter. On Gen­er­al Elec­tion night in 2010, 2015 and now 2025, when it was known the in­cum­bent prime min­is­ters would have lost the elec­tion, cer­tain mem­bers of the de­tail left al­most im­me­di­ate­ly to pro­tect the prime min­is­ter elect.

Fol­low­ing Row­ley’s re­turn to pri­vate life, of­fi­cers as­signed to pro­tect him from a near­by mo­bile po­lice post had raised pub­lic com­plaints about the poor con­di­tions they were work­ing un­der. They com­plained that the van, which was parked me­tres from the for­mer prime min­is­ter’s Good­wood Park res­i­dence, was derelict, with no func­tion­ing door, no run­ning wa­ter, no prop­er ven­ti­la­tion, and on­ly re­ceiv­ing elec­tric­i­ty through an ex­ten­sion cord from the house.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands, in re­sponse to the of­fi­cers’ com­plaints, the for­mer prime min­is­ter re­port­ed­ly asked that the post be re­moved al­to­geth­er.

“So, Cab­i­net has noth­ing to do now oth­er than to see who got bus route pass and whose se­cu­ri­ty to re­move. In my time, it was the po­lice that did threat as­sess­ment and de­ter­mined what lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty to pro­vide to cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly pub­lic of­fi­cials,” Row­ley said.

“If that func­tion is now be­ing car­ried out by Cab­i­net, then that must be the new “win.” If it is de­cid­ed that the cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Leader has a greater risk than the last prime min­is­ter, then so be it.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les still has her of­fi­cial state-pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

Row­ley, how­ev­er, said he’s un­both­ered by the de­vel­op­ments.

“I am not tak­ing on any of them as they car­ry out their var­i­ous ac­tions and state­ments. I re­main a proud cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go, one who con­tributed to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. That they could nev­er take away and there­in lies my joy and sat­is­fac­tion.”