CoP: Jack not authorised

“I had a meeting with him (Warner) at about 2 pm yesterday (Tuesday) in which he raised concerns in relation to the dissemination of information on matters of murder. However he issued no instruction and since then I have received no instruction and (I will say) the Minister has no authority to issue instructions to the Police Service on an operational issue.

“The Minister (Warner) is responsible for giving policy directives along with the Government and all policy directions we are given we will comply with. But the matter of dissemination of information is one which I believe the Police Service has a legal obligation to fulfill and we will in fact be fulfilling,” Williams said.

Asked to comment on why he thought Warner would seek to silence the Police Service, Williams said: “It is really a cause and effect relationship (between crime rates and publication of criminal incidents) he is speaking about and we have yet to conduct any study which would reveal such a connection, so I don’t want to say much more on the issue.” Asked to comment on Warner’s assertion that Tuesday’s murder of Stephon Morris in Laventille was a PNM murder, Wiliams said, “I heard the comment and what I can say is that I don’t know what is a PNM murder.”

“That statement was made by a politician, and you see politicians will continue to speak in a certain context when it comes to certain things. You will have an opposition and you will have a government making statements following this incident and for many other incidents, and I am staying away from all that,” Williams said.