KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day con­firmed that three peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed for the ab­duc­tion of Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais, two of whom are po­lice con­sta­bles at­tached to the La Ro­maine Po­lice Post.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the two con­sta­bles were ar­rest­ed around 8 pm Mon­day while on du­ty. The third per­son was ar­rest­ed 30 min­utes lat­er when po­lice in­ter­cept­ed an AD Wag­on along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, San Juan.

The ve­hi­cle was be­ing used to trans­port Pol­lon­ais and was dri­ven by a civil­ian who was al­so ar­rest­ed.

Grif­fith said con­trary to ini­tial re­ports, a cor­po­ral at­tached to the High­way Pa­trol Unit was not held in re­la­tion to the kid­nap­ping. Pho­tographs of the of­fi­cer in uni­form, as well as the two con­sta­bles, went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia overnight and threat­en­ing and dis­parag­ing com­ments were made against the men.

But in a re­lease yes­ter­day, po­lice said the cor­po­ral was “in no way” in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the kid­nap­ping and the pub­lic was urged to “cease and de­sist” from cir­cu­lat­ing state­ments that may be deemed defam­a­to­ry in re­la­tion to the of­fi­cer.

A se­nior of­fi­cer told the T&T Guardian the cor­po­ral was at home yes­ter­day when he learnt he was be­ing wrong­ful­ly la­belled a crim­i­nal. The of­fi­cer then con­tact­ed the po­lice hi­er­ar­chy ex­press­ing his hurt at be­ing ac­cused of kid­nap­ping. The of­fi­cer con­firmed the cor­po­ral was nev­er part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Grif­fith, in ac­knowl­edg­ing the pub­lic out­rage at po­lice’s al­leged in­volve­ment in Pol­lon­ais’ kid­nap­ping, al­so ap­pealed to cit­i­zens “to not al­low the acts of a mis­guid­ed mi­nor­i­ty to ad­verse­ly af­fect or im­pair their re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice.”

Re­in­forc­ing his full con­fi­dence in his charges, Grif­fith al­so en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to re­spect and obey the law­ful in­struc­tions of po­lice of­fi­cers who have prop­er­ly iden­ti­fied them­selves.

He said cit­i­zens were al­so with­in their right to re­quest the name and reg­i­men­tal num­ber of any of­fi­cer they meet, not­ing all of­fi­cers are is­sued with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards which they are re­quired to car­ry with them at all times.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, San Fer­nan­do CID worked in tan­dem with oth­er op­er­a­tional units dur­ing Mon­day night’s res­cue op­er­a­tion.

When the Or­gan­ised Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence Unit and the An­ti Kid­nap­ping Units re­trieved Pol­lon­ais and ar­rest­ed the first sus­pect, a team com­pris­ing ASP Ramdeen, In­sp Ga­jad­har, Cpl Bac­chus, Cpl Pul­chan, PC George, PC Lange, PC Moses and PC Acevero moved on the two con­sta­bles. They were be­ing held at an undis­closed lo­ca­tion up to last night.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that over the week­end the er­rant of­fi­cers were be­ing mon­i­tored while oth­er in­tel­li­gence units gath­ered in­for­ma­tion about Pol­lon­ais’ lo­ca­tion.

Pol­lon­ais, 49, of Palmiste, is the wife of Ja­son Pol­lon­ais, a di­rec­tor of the South Oropouche-based In­land and Off­shore Con­trac­tors Ltd (IO­CL). Last Thurs­day, she dis­ap­peared af­ter vis­it­ing the Cen­tral Ath­let­ic Club gym and some stores at C3 Cen­tre. CCTV footage showed she left in her BMW 5308 hy­brid sedan around 11.30 am. Her hus­band re­port­ed her miss­ing when she did not re­turn home.

In­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ed that the kid­nap­pers were mov­ing Pol­lon­ais to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion Mon­day, the T&T Guardian was told. A tac­ti­cal unit was de­ployed and the wag­on was in­ter­cept­ed.

A Ford Ranger, which was said to be ac­com­pa­ny­ing the wag­on, was found aban­doned in St Au­gus­tine. The two ve­hi­cles were tak­en to the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) in Cu­mu­to for foren­sic test­ing.