Head of Special Branch Senior Supt Gary Gould said yesterday the investigator probing the discovery of marijuana at the prime minister’s property in 2013 would deal with whatever issue arose regarding a report on the matter. Gould headed the Special Branch in 2013 when the drugs were found.
He had submitted a report to the acting Police Commissioner on Tuesday—just prior to a news conference on the issue by Independent Liberal Party (ILP) political leader Jack Warner—that five grammes of a plant-like material resembling marijuana was found by a member of the Special Branch in a plastic bag in the male washroom of a gazebo on the western end of the PM’s Phillipine residence on April 19, 2013, around 8.50 am.
Warner has said he was informed by former deputy commissioner of police Mervyn Richardson on April 12, 2013, of the discovery of four ounces of weed on a ledge outside a window of the PM’s house. He said an officer had taken a photo of the find and he urged the media to check the police station and diary on the matter. Contacted yesterday, Gould declined questions, saying: “I’m not in a position to discuss anything on the matter.”
Yesterday, Warner, when asked about the difference in details given by himself and the police report, said: “The police say they discovered material ‘resembling that of marijuana’ in the male toilet of the PM's Phillipine home on April 19. I say that members of the PM’s security detail discovered four ounces of marijuana on the ground outside a window of the PM’s Phillipine home on April 12.
“The PM in her two-paragraph release refers to something ‘found on the common grounds outside of my residence’ etc, and that she was out of the country. Don’t tell me that you don’t see the contradictions here and that this matter is getting messier and messier because of the series of lies that are being offered by the minute.”
Former national security minister Gary Griffith also said someone in the police service “dropped the ball” on the matter since an analysis of the “plant-like substance” should have been done at the time which would have ascertained whether it was an illegal substance. “Or at least it should have been by now,” he added. He maintained it was for the police to comment on the issue.
Griffith said he would have been out of place to try to speak to the police on any matter as that would have usurped the then national security minister’s authority. Warner was national security minister during that period. He said Warner just mentioned the issue to him, probably as hearsay, not for Griffith to have acted on since it would have been the minister who liased with the Prime Minister on such a matter.
On Tuesday, Griffith confirmed he had attempted to speak to Warner to make peace between the ILP and People’s Partnership (PP). Warner, at his earlier media conference, said United National Congress officials and a Congress of the People emissary had been holding talks with him in the last four months to try to restore his relationship with the PP. Warner had claimed this was to make him the “poster boy for the East-West corridor.”