Senior police investigators believe a former acting commissioner of police, now retired, and a director of a south-based contracting company might be able to provide useful information to investigators trying to find out how a decommissioned police car ended up back in use escorting heavy machinery.
The squad car was removed from the Cumuto scrapyard. Its interception on June 24 has triggered a wider investigation and audit in search of an undisclosed number of police vehicles, outfitted with flashing blue lights and sirens, now known to be missing.
The chance interception of a marked squad car, driven by a civilian in Tableland, escorting trucks carrying heavy machinery owned by the Laing Group of Companies has opened a Pandora's box and a desperate search for the missing vehicles, which police believe could be used to commit criminal offences.
Part of the investigation is focused on a possible link unearthed by national-security intelligence agencies to use several police vehicles in a jailbreak plot being hatched by a prisoner awaiting trial for a high-profile murder.
This is not the first time police vehicles have been discovered in use by civilians. A similar incident took place last year when a marked vehicle, which had left a garage in southwestern Trinidad, was intercepted in the Western Division.
Sunday Newsday contacted retired deputy commissioner Irwin Hackshaw to find out if he could provide any information on how a decommissioned police vehicle was used by a company to which he once provided security consultancy services.
Hackshaw left the service in November last year while under investigation by the Police Complaints Authority. He was under suspicion of receiving millions of dollars from several business organisations, including Laing Sandblasting and Painting Company Ltd.
Questions were also sent to Damian Laing, a director of the Laing Group, but had not been answered up to press time. The normal process to request a police escort can be made at a police station or online and once approved has an attached cost, police familiar with the process said.
Sunday Newsday, in a WhatsApp exchange, asked Hackshaw whether he still had a business relationship with the Laing Group and particularly Damian Laing. Hackshaw replied, "Do not ask me any questions about that nonsense."
[caption id="attachment_898970" align="alignnone" width="683"] Retired Deputy Commissioner of Police Irwin Hackshaw during an event at the Police Academy in July 2020. - FILE PHOTO/ROGER JACOB[/caption]
He referred to Express investigative reporter Denyse Renne, who broke the story that the Financial Intelligence Unit had flagged him for suspicious activity in 18 separate accounts, suggesting that Sunday Newsday seek answers from her.
"You all are scrubs (sic) that pick up the scrums (sic),” he said, “and when you all have nothing to write about, just as you all did, and you in particular, about me without a shred of evidence and proof."
Hackshaw said the story was being pursued without giving the "police servi
