Derek Achong

Two T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Stand­ing Or­ders, al­low­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to de­stroy their of­fi­cial notes with­in two and three years of crim­i­nal cas­es be­ing de­ter­mined by the courts, have been struck down. 

High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran made the or­der on Wednes­day, as he up­held a law­suit from a Gas­par­il­lo man who chal­lenged the Stand­ings Or­ders, af­ter he was un­able to ob­tain the records to pur­sue a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case against the State over be­ing charged for ob­struct­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer and us­ing in­sult­ing lan­guage to­wards him. 

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings in the case, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Keron Phillip was charged with the of­fences af­ter he chal­lenged the wreck­ing of his car in May 2014. 

Phillip re­port­ed­ly parked his car along Mur­ray Street in Wood­brook and found that it was miss­ing when he re­turned sev­er­al hours lat­er. 

Phillip then learned his car had been wrecked and even­tu­al­ly found it at an im­pound lot. He claimed that he spoke to a po­lice of­fi­cer at the lo­ca­tion and re­quest­ed an ex­pla­na­tion, as he claimed he did not vi­o­late any park­ing laws or re­stric­tions. He was told he had to pay the $500 first. De­spite com­ply­ing, the of­fi­cer still re­fused to re­lease the car. 

Phillip claimed that the of­fi­cer in­stead be­came ag­gres­sive and or­dered him to va­cate the com­pound. While leav­ing, he asked an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer the same ques­tion. Be­fore the of­fi­cer could re­spond, how­ev­er, Phillip was ar­rest­ed by his col­league. He was sub­se­quent­ly charged with the two of­fences. 

He made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore a mag­is­trate up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion on his be­half in Jan­u­ary 2017.

In April 2020, Phillip’s lawyers sent a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for of­fi­cial records re­lat­ed to his ar­rest, which was need­ed to pur­sue a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case against the State. 

They were told that the of­fi­cers’ pock­et di­aries and the sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts for the im­pound lot could not be dis­closed, as they were de­stroyed pur­suant to TTPS Stand­ing Or­der 16 (11) and 17 (13).

Un­der Stand­ing Or­der 16 (11), po­lice of­fi­cers are al­lowed to de­stroy their pock­et di­aries two years af­ter a case is de­ter­mined. 

The oth­er pro­hibits a sta­tion di­ary from be­ing de­stroyed with­in three years of the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a case in which it was used. 

In the law­suit, Phillip’s lawyers sub­mit­ted that the stand­ing or­ders were un­rea­son­able, as they al­lowed for the dis­pos­al of the records be­fore the four-year lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od un­der the Lim­i­ta­tions of Cer­tain Ac­tions Act, for bring­ing ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion and false im­pris­on­ment claims af­ter crim­i­nal charges are dis­missed. 

“With­out the said doc­u­ments, the Claimant would not be able to ob­tain prop­er le­gal ad­vice and may be faced with an un­nec­es­sary and some­what in­sur­mount­able hur­dle in prov­ing his case and there­fore, is de­nied any op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­tain jus­tice,” they said. 

In re­sponse to the law­suit, the State pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence from sev­er­al se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers. 

In his af­fi­davit, ASP Lu­cien Fer­gu­son, of the TTPS’s Hu­man Re­source Branch, claimed that the pol­i­cy was due to is­sues with lim­it­ed stor­age space for the records. 

In his ev­i­dence, act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) William Nurse, who chairs the TTPS’s Stand­ing Or­ders Com­mit­tee, not­ed that the poli­cies were de­vised al­most 40 years ago and are in need of up­dat­ing. 

ACP Nurse not­ed that the com­mit­tee is cur­rent­ly in the process of re­view­ing the stand­ing or­ders, in­clud­ing the two struck out by Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran, but was de­layed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

“From ini­tial dis­cus­sions, the re­draft will give con­sid­er­a­tion to not per­mit­ting the de­struc­tion of di­aries and sta­tion di­aries,” ACP Nurse said in his ev­i­dence be­fore the case was even­tu­al­ly de­ter­mined. 

In an email no­ti­fi­ca­tion which was sent to the par­ties on Wednes­day, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran up­held Phillip’s claim over the un­rea­son­able­ness of the spe­cif­ic stand­ing or­ders and or­dered that they be struck out. 

Phillip was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Dr Che Din­di­al and Jared Ja­groo. 

Michael Quam­i­na, Te­nille Ramkissoon, Vin­cent Jar­dine and Tiffany Kissoon rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in the case.