Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed has grant­ed leave to 115 po­lice con­sta­bles to chal­lenge a de­ci­sion by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to pro­mote sev­er­al of­fi­cers ahead of them in a mat­ter that cre­at­ed con­tro­ver­sy with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

The of­fi­cers are con­tend­ing that the de­ci­sion to pro­mote 29 of­fi­cers, who were named in the ju­di­cial re­view law­suit, ahead of them, is un­law­ful. The con­sta­bles are fur­ther claim­ing that 29 of­fi­cers on the com­par­a­tive mer­it list scored less than them but got pro­mot­ed due to a com­put­er glitch.

The of­fi­cers, via their le­gal ac­tion, are seek­ing a court or­der com­pelling Hare­wood-Christo­pher to retroac­tive­ly pro­mote them to cor­po­ral as of Sep­tem­ber 29, 2023.

The mat­ter stemmed from the pro­mo­tion of 896 con­sta­bles to the rank of cor­po­ral from the TTPS Or­der of Mer­it List pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2023. Hav­ing re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the mer­it list con­tained er­rors, the of­fi­cers re­quest­ed from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er the in­di­vid­ual scores for each of­fi­cer through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act ap­pli­ca­tion. Their re­quest was de­nied and that mat­ter is en­gag­ing the court’s at­ten­tion in a sep­a­rate claim.

Due to the er­rors on the Mer­it List, a new com­par­a­tive mer­it list was pro­duced in Jan­u­ary and 29 of­fi­cers were er­ro­neous­ly pro­mot­ed.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue, Act­ing DCP Ram­nar­ine Sama­roo, who is in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion, had stat­ed that an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­firmed that the 29 of­fi­cers were pro­mot­ed er­ro­neous­ly due to a “glitch” in the process.

Sama­roo said then that the ex­ec­u­tive sought ad­vice on how to ad­dress the is­sue of the pro­mot­ed of­fi­cers who ben­e­fit­ted from the glitch.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion al­so called on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to re­lease the scores of the of­fi­cers, re­voke the pro­mo­tion of the 29 of­fi­cers and launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The of­fi­cers’ at­tor­neys had ini­tial­ly sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter in March call­ing on Hare­wood-Christo­pher to retroac­tive­ly pro­mote the of­fi­cers. The com­mis­sion­er asked for two ex­ten­sions to re­spond but to date, there has been no com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse to their let­ter.

There are 1,200 po­si­tions for cor­po­rals with­in the TTPS. The grounds of the of­fi­cers’ law­suit in­clud­ed de­pri­va­tion of le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion, un­rea­son­able, ir­reg­u­lar or im­prop­er ex­er­cise of dis­cre­tion, fail­ure to pro­mote the leg­isla­tive pur­pose of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act and Reg­u­la­tion and that it amounts to an abuse of pow­er and/or ex­er­cise of pow­er in a man­ner that was so un­rea­son­able that no pub­lic au­thor­i­ty could have so ex­er­cised the pow­er.

The of­fi­cers con­tend­ed that the com­mis­sion­er, “up­on re­al­is­ing that the ini­tial or­der of mer­it list was lit­tered with er­rors, ought to have tak­en steps to re­scind/re­voke the er­ro­neous ap­point­ments to the rank of cor­po­ral up­on the pub­li­ca­tion of the com­par­a­tive mer­it list.” They al­so claimed that the com­mis­sion­er act­ed un­fair­ly and in breach of their le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion by pro­mot­ing the of­fi­cers ahead of them.

They fur­ther claimed that the com­mis­sion­er has failed to con­sid­er that these “er­ro­neous ap­point­ments will con­tin­ue to have an ad­min­is­tra­tive and morale im­part in the po­lice ser­vice, specif­i­cal­ly as it re­lates to act­ing ap­point­ments and fu­ture ap­point­ments.”

The of­fi­cers are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Rhea Khan, Keron Ramkha­lawhan and Shali­ni Sankar. The mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to be heard on No­vem­ber 4. Con­tact­ed for a com­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day, So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, said he had an­tic­i­pat­ed this out­come of the court.

He said, “What is play­ing out here, we an­tic­i­pat­ed that it would have an­tic­i­pat­ed and be­cause it has reached this stage, the as­so­ci­a­tion would re­serve its right to com­ment any fur­ther be­cause it can be­come sub ju­dice.”

With re­gards to their ear­li­er re­quests to the com­mis­sion­er re­gard­ing this mat­ter, he said they got an ac­knowl­edge­ment.