QUESTIONS

 On May 17th 2023 the Commissioner of Police promised an investigation and a report on the Brent Thomas affair. Readers will recall that Mr. Thomas had been charged with possession of illegal firearms and had travelled to Barbados where he was arrested by Barbadian police and brought back to Trinidad by Trinidadian police on a plane especially hired/commandeered by Trinidadian police for the express purpose of carrying out this act. The problem was that the arrest in Barbados was done without a warrant. In other words, no Court whether here or in Barbados had given the police any authority to extradite Mr. Thomas.

Put another way, on the face of it the T&T police appear to have acted illegally.

Now, today marks exactly three months from the date when our erstwhile Commissioner of Police promised a report on this matter "within two weeks". Well, in most people's minds two weeks is  a lot shorter than three months. So? What could the reason (or reasons) be for this delay? Incompetence? That is possible. Indeed, that would probably be the kindest reason. Because it is not beyond the bounds of speculation that some senior person, either in the Police Force or in politics, has indicated that the matter be quietly swept under the carpet so that everybody will simply forget about it.

Assuming (though certainly not accepting) that this second possibility is the real reason that nothing has been done, that would be a most worrying conclusion as it would mean quite clearly that a certain person or persons  can act with complete impunity and break the law whenever he/she/they feel like it.

The fact that the print media has not followed up on this suggests that the affair might have political overtones. While this is by no means certain, assuming (though again not accepting) that this is so, then the question should be what politician had been so offended by Mr. Thomas that he/she would have wanted him to be so punished and humiliated? Alternatively, who in the police service might have had something to gain by this? There are too many questions arising out of this matter, and all the reasonable answers that one might think of relating to this are very ugly. Indeed, there are a lot more questions that could be asked that haven't been asked here, but the basic question is why? Why did the police do what they did?