Answers need to be provided on the mandate of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) as the original role conceived for the unit appears to have been totally abandoned and it is “out of control,” former Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran says.
In his column in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek, Ramkarran said SOCU’s mandate was clearly vastly expanded under the new APNU+AFC government with no public announcement. “This secretive new role came into sharp focus in a spectacularly tragic manner. The horrific accident, which claimed three lives at the Christmas holidays, arose from a stakeout by SOCU, using military personnel, which degenerated into a car chase, to prevent the removal of documents from a house wrongly thought to be Mr Winston Brassington’s home,” he wrote.
He was referring to the bungled SOCU operation which resulted in the deaths of army intelligence officer Robert Pyle, his wife Stacy Pyle and truck driver Linden Eastman, along Carifesta Avenue on December 30, 2015 during a
