RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

Head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), David West, has praised the po­lice ser­vice’s de­ci­sion to re­open a con­tro­ver­sial cor­rup­tion case in­volv­ing sev­en po­lice of­fi­cers, call­ing it a step to­ward jus­tice. How­ev­er, West stressed the im­por­tance of a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing, “We will con­tin­ue our in­de­pen­dent probe in­to why this mat­ter was dis­missed ini­tial­ly.”

West con­firmed that the PCA had re­quest­ed doc­u­ments from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and is await­ing her re­sponse. He com­mend­ed the com­mis­sion­er for act­ing swift­ly to re-lay charges, not­ing, “This demon­strates a de­ci­sive ef­fort to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).”

The case in­volves sev­en of­fi­cers—In­spec­tor Deyal Ram­lakhan, act­ing Cor­po­ral Sa­heed Khan, Con­sta­bles Leon Smith, Da­vanan Rag­bir, Macael Joseph, Ja­son O’Souna, and SRP Shawn Charles—ac­cused of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing funds and con­spir­ing to fal­si­fy state­ments dur­ing an il­le­gal gam­bling in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The first case against the of­fi­cers col­lapsed last week. High Court Mas­ter Sarah De Sil­va dis­missed the charges based on the pros­e­cu­tion’s fail­ure to meet court or­ders, present cru­cial ev­i­dence, and en­sure the at­ten­dance of key wit­ness­es.

But fol­low­ing ad­vice from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), the TTPS an­nounced that sum­mons­es would be served, re­quir­ing the of­fi­cers to ap­pear in court.

Op­po­si­tion MP and Shad­ow Min­is­ter for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, al­so wel­comed the re­open­ing of the case but em­pha­sised the need for broad­er re­forms with­in the po­lice ser­vice.

“This must not dis­tract from the dis­ci­pli­nary is­sues con­cern­ing the of­fi­cers re­spon­si­ble for the ini­tial dis­missal. The pub­lic de­serves to know who is ac­count­able and what mea­sures are be­ing tak­en to pre­vent a re­cur­rence,” Mooni­lal said.

He crit­i­cised the rul­ing PNM Gov­ern­ment, ac­cus­ing it of weak­en­ing the in­de­pen­dence of law en­force­ment agen­cies.

“Low trust in law en­force­ment leads to re­duced cit­i­zen sup­port for polic­ing, which un­der­mines na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ef­forts,” Mooni­lal stat­ed, adding that a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion would pri­ori­tise restor­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Mooni­lal al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress what he called the sys­temic cri­sis of trust in law en­force­ment as a mat­ter of crit­i­cal pub­lic pol­i­cy.