DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has agreed to add a con­sul­tan­cy com­pa­ny to a law­suit over the pro­mo­tion as­sess­ment process for the rank of As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice (ASP). 

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad took the de­ci­sion in re­la­tion to Odyssey Con­sult­inc Lim­it­ed, as the law­suit brought by In­spec­tor Mark Her­nan­dez al­leg­ing breach­es of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act and Reg­u­la­tions came up for hear­ing on Wednes­day morn­ing. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ferred to ev­i­dence filed by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Natasha George af­ter the law­suit was filed by Her­nan­dez and an al­most iden­ti­cal case was brought by his col­league In­spec­tor Vene­ta Weaver-Ali.

In her af­fi­davit, George ad­mit­ted that she wrong­ly ad­vised Odyssey, which was hired by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to as­sist with the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise, to al­low all par­tic­i­pants to ad­vance to the sec­ond stage of the process even if they failed to at­tain the pass mark in the ex­am­i­na­tion stage. 

She claimed that she was sub­se­quent­ly ad­vised that on­ly the “top per­form­ing can­di­dates” could ad­vance based on the reg­u­la­tions. 

“I, there­fore, act­ed on a mis­tak­en ba­sis in in­form­ing Odyssey to per­mit all can­di­dates from stage one to ad­vance to stage two of the process,” George said. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ques­tioned the sta­tus of the case in light of George’s ad­mis­sion. 

“Clear­ly on the face of the ev­i­dence, there was a sig­nif­i­cant mis­step on how the process should move for­ward,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said. 

He ques­tioned whether the en­tire process should be restart­ed and the case aban­doned. 

Se­nior Coun­sel Rishi Dass, who led the le­gal team for the State, sug­gest­ed that the case should be al­lowed to pro­ceed on an ex­pe­dit­ed ba­sis as it is not on­ly lim­it­ed to the is­sue ad­dressed by George. 

“It would not help us to restart and there is this same dis­pute,” Dass said. 

Her­nan­dez’s lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen agreed but called on Jus­tice Seep­er­sad to add Odyssey as he ques­tioned why it did not vol­un­teer its par­tic­i­pa­tion. 

“I am dis­ap­point­ed by the con­duct of some­one paid by the tax­pay­ers who is not will­ing to come and pro­vide the court with as­sis­tance on the wider is­sues,” Ramdeen said. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad agreed and grant­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion. 

The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing on No­vem­ber 12, when Jus­tice Seep­er­sad is ex­pect­ed to fi­nalise a time­line for the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case. He promised to give a fi­nal rul­ing be­fore the end of the year. 

Her­nan­dez was the head of the now-de­funct Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), which was es­tab­lished un­der the tenure of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith. 

How­ev­er, he has been on sus­pen­sion since May 2021 when he was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice in re­la­tion to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the treat­ment of the sus­pects held for the ab­duc­tion and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt in­clud­ing two, who died while in po­lice cus­tody. 

There is no le­gal im­ped­i­ment for of­fi­cers to be pro­mot­ed while they have pend­ing crim­i­nal cas­es. 

While Her­nan­dez’s lawyers are com­plain­ing that col­leagues with­out per­for­mance ap­praisals were al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise, they are al­so chal­leng­ing how the ap­praisals were done. 

They claimed that Her­nan­dez and oth­er of­fi­cers re­ceived blan­ket “out­stand­ing” rat­ings with­out their per­for­mance be­ing crit­i­cal­ly as­sessed. 

They sug­gest­ed that the “uni­ver­sal mark pro­ce­dure’’ was con­trary to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) mer­it-based sys­tem of pro­mo­tion pol­i­cy. 

Her­nan­dez was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Dayadai Har­ri­paul. 

Weaver-Ali is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Ka­ri­na Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Sav­it­ri Sama­roo, and Vashisht Seep­er­sad. 

Coreen Find­ley, Akee­nie Mur­ray and Ka­dine Matthew ap­peared along­side Dass for Hare­wood-Christo­pher and the AG’s Of­fice.