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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

After being overlooked for CoP post ...

Dickson takes legal action

by

Derek Achong
22 days ago
20250128
TTPSSWA president ASP  Gideon Dickson

TTPSSWA president ASP Gideon Dickson

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent (ASP) Gideon Dick­son has been giv­en the all-clear to pur­sue a law­suit over not be­ing con­sid­ered for the po­si­tion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er be­cause he did not have the req­ui­site post-grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Last Fri­day, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo grant­ed Dick­son leave to pur­sue his ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion over the de­ci­sion tak­en by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC). 

The claim was filed ear­li­er this month by Dick­son’s lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, with Dick­son al­ready hav­ing a sim­i­lar pend­ing case against the PolSC in re­la­tion to its fail­ure to con­sid­er him for the post of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP). 

In his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Dick­son’s lawyers claimed that in April, last year, he re­spond­ed to an ad­ver­tise­ment pub­lished by the com­mis­sion for the post of po­lice com­mis­sion­er (CoP). 

Sev­er­al months lat­er, the com­mis­sion wrote to Dick­son in­form­ing him that the Mas­ter in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion (MBA), he earned from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bed­ford­shire in the Unit­ed King­dom in 2021 did not fall in the de­f­i­n­i­tion of a “rel­e­vant de­gree” in its re­cruit­ment pol­i­cy. 

Dick­son wrote to the com­mis­sion pro­vid­ing de­tails of his MBA and the rel­e­vance of his as­so­ci­at­ed the­sis to polic­ing and law en­force­ment. 

The com­mis­sion con­sid­ered the sub­mis­sion but main­tained its po­si­tion. 

Dick­son’s lawyers said that be­fore March 2022 there was no pub­lished pol­i­cy for the com­mis­sion to de­ter­mine the “rel­e­van­cy” of an of­fi­cer’s ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions. 

They claimed that af­ter dis­cus­sions with the as­so­ci­a­tion, the com­mis­sion pub­lished a de­tailed as­sess­ment pol­i­cy and in­clud­ed an MBA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bed­ford­shire as a rel­e­vant de­gree for con­sid­er­a­tion for pro­mo­tion to the rank of DCP and CoP. 

They not­ed that in Feb­ru­ary, last year, the com­mis­sion pro­mot­ed Dick­son’s col­league Ju­nior Ben­jamin to the rank of DCP. 

They point­ed out that Ben­jamin ob­tained an MBA from the same in­sti­tu­tion a year be­fore Dick­son and they both did sim­i­lar cours­es. 

Stat­ing that the top­ic and con­tents of Dick­son and Ben­jamin’s the­ses were sim­i­lar if not iden­ti­cal, they said, “He (Dick­son) is un­able to un­der­stand how the de­fen­dant ap­plied the rel­e­van­cy cri­te­ria to oth­er can­di­dates like Mr Ben­jamin and deemed that he sat­is­fied it on the ba­sis that his the­sis ad­dressed the core func­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice but re­ject­ed the ap­pli­cant/claimant the­sis which was more or less sim­i­lar to that of Mr Ben­jamin.”

Dick­son’s lawyers claimed that the com­mis­sion was wrong to look in­to his de­gree.

“Nei­ther the Con­sti­tu­tion nor any oth­er piece of leg­is­la­tion au­tho­ris­es the Com­mis­sion to fix or de­ter­mine the min­i­mum con­di­tions/qual­i­fi­ca­tion,” they said. 

“In the cir­cum­stances, the pur­port­ed re­view of the Claimant’s the­sis by the Com­mis­sion to de­ter­mine whether it meets the pre­scribed min­i­mum re­quire­ments is un­law­ful and il­le­gal,” they added. 

They de­scribed the com­mis­sion’s ac­tions as un­fair, ar­bi­trary, il­le­gal and ir­ra­tional. 

“This was not a course that was open to the PolSC with­out any form of pri­or no­ti­fi­ca­tion and con­sul­ta­tion with af­fect­ed and ag­griev­ed of­fi­cers,” they said. 

“The De­fen­dant is not en­ti­tled to use the rel­e­van­cy pol­i­cy to ‘pick’ and ‘choose’ which ap­pli­cants they wish to con­sid­er and ap­point,” they added, as they not­ed that the min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions are set by Par­lia­ment and the Ex­ec­u­tive. 

Through the law­suit, Dick­son seeks a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the de­ci­sion and an or­der to quash it. He is seek­ing an or­der com­pelling the com­mis­sion to con­sid­er him the next time it seeks to fill the of­fice. 

He al­so seeks a de­c­la­ra­tion that his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to equal­i­ty be­fore the law and pro­tec­tion of the law was breached and com­pen­sa­tion for such. 

Dick­son is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, Natasha Bis­ram, and Jared Ja­groo. 


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