The po­lice were on Sunday forced to re­verse their de­ci­sion to block sta­tion bail for some of the 61 peo­ple who were ar­rest­ed for breach­ing COVID-19 pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions at a bar in Bel­mont last Fri­day. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the de­tainees, in­clud­ing three com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers from east Port-of-Spain, re­mained in po­lice cus­tody at var­i­ous sta­tions across north Trinidad for well over 24 hours be­fore in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­gan charg­ing them yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

Sources said af­ter the in­di­vid­u­als were charged their lawyers went to the po­lice sta­tions with jus­tices of the peace for con­sid­er­a­tion of bail for them, pend­ing their even­tu­al vir­tu­al court ap­pear­ances at a lat­er date. Sta­tion bail is usu­al­ly grant­ed by JPs for mi­nor bail­able of­fences, es­pe­cial­ly in cas­es where the ac­cused stand to re­main de­tained for lengthy pe­ri­ods be­fore ap­pear­ing in court, for ex­am­ple on week­ends. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that af­ter be­ing blanked, at­tor­neys Wayne Sturge, Alex­ia Romero, Kir­by Joseph and Ran­dall Raphael, who are rep­re­sent­ing a dozen of the in­di­vid­u­als, filed habeas cor­pus law­suits chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion to de­ny the men sta­tion bail. 

Some of the cas­es were con­sol­i­dat­ed but the case for one of the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers came up for vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore the oth­ers.

 Dur­ing the hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, the le­gal team con­tend­ed that the de­ci­sion was in breach of the man’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to ac­cess bail. Gob­in even­tu­al­ly ruled in their favour, giv­ing the JPs the green light to start and com­plete the process from him. 

The lawyers then wrote the TTPS ex­plain­ing the out­come of the case and sug­gest­ing that the de­ci­sion be ap­plied to the oth­ers in the in­ter­est of avoid­ing the TTPS in­cur­ring ad­di­tion­al le­gal costs. The men, who were rep­re­sent­ed by the le­gal team, were lat­er fa­cil­i­tat­ed. 

Le­gal sources said at­tor­neys Lemuel Mur­phy and Richard Clarke-Willis, who are rep­re­sent­ing an­oth­er com­mu­ni­ty leader, who was al­so re­cent­ly charged with the of­fence af­ter be­ing al­leged­ly caught in a casi­no, filed sim­i­lar ac­tion that came up for hear­ing late yes­ter­day evening. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the group was ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice raid­ed a bar at Belle Eau Road in Bel­mont last Fri­day. 

Un­der the on­go­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions, which sets the open­ing hours for some non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es such as restau­rants and bars and pre­cludes gath­er­ing in groups of more than 25, a per­son found in breach faces a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison.