Minister of National Security, nevertheless, supports work of the GSU

John Saldivar

In his usual Thursday morning appearance on Wave’s morning show today, Minister of National Security, John Saldivar, said that his ministry firmly supports the work of the Gang Suppression Unit despite the unwarranted aggression during the Taylor’s Alley shakedown.

John Saldivar, Minister of National Security

“The case of brutality and excessive use of force in the Taylor’s Alley incident, of I think about two weeks ago, I had asked a group of three persons headed by former Commissioner of Police Hughington Williams, Reverend Hughington Williams by the way, along with Ms. [Donelle] Hawke from the Ministry of National Security.  He’s an attorney and a fellow I believe [his name is Ian] Gray from the Ombudsman’s Office and so first of all I think we put together a great team of highly qualified persons and persons of integrity. We’ve got to make sure the public knows that we stand firmly behind the GSU.  We stand firmly behind the Police Department in the execution of their duties but we are now in a different mode where we’re going to try our best to move even further towards more professionalism, more professional conduct and more respect for the human rights of all including the human rights of the perpetrators of crime.  And so that is where we are with respect to that inquiry.  We’re sending a clear message to both the police and the criminals about police brutality on one hand; zero tolerance and hey we’re going to come at you hard if you continue to be in that deviant behavior. It is not our intention to ban the GSU, in fact we want to strengthen the GSU, expand the GSU as far as is manageable because, as I’ve been told already by the senior command, you don’t want that unit to get too big because it becomes unwieldy and it’s difficult to manage.”

The ministry has also decided to transfer those members that used excessive force on the Taylor’s Alley residents and that training would be provided to members of the GSU. Saldivar appointed former Commissioner of Police Hughington Williams, Donelle Hawke and Ian Gray of the Ombudsman’s Office, to head the inquiry.  This morning he commended the three-member commission for objectively carrying out the investigation.