Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

New­ly ap­point­ed Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Co-or­di­na­tor for Ch­agua­nas Stephan Kishore has been keep­ing a se­cret. At 26, he has a crim­i­nal record. In 2006, Kishore served 60 days in prison in the Unit­ed States and was put on pro­ba­tion for three years for il­le­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a fake fed­er­al agent's iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card. He had to re­turn to his home in Cen­tral Trinidad in 2009 af­ter be­ing un­able to ob­tain a green card be­cause of his crim­i­nal record.

Af­ter try­ing his hand at an as­sort­ment of jobs be­fore land­ing the post at the Ch­agua­nas Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion last year, Kishore con­fessed to the Sun­day Guardian on Thurs­day that he had opt­ed to re­main tight-lipped about his past in or­der to get a job. "Don't ask, don't tell," Kishore said, as he con­tem­plat­ed his next move fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of this ar­ti­cle.

"If you were in my po­si­tion, what would you have done?" he asked, throw­ing his hands up in the air. Kishore was of­fered the three-year con­tract in Oc­to­ber. Af­ter the mass de­struc­tion caused by se­vere weath­er last year, co-or­di­na­tors were as­signed to dif­fer­ent ar­eas to deal with af­fect­ed res­i­dents. Kishore was the on­ly new dis­as­ter co-or­di­na­tor to be ap­point­ed, re­plac­ing Jagdeo Bal­roop. He re­ceives a salary of $9,500.

A blast from the past

But his de­ci­sion to stay qui­et is not sit­ting well with some of his col­leagues, who view it as an at­tempt to "out­smart" of­fi­cials. "He should have been up­front and put his cards on the ta­ble. If he was to get the job he would have been hired, but now it is not look­ing right at all," one of them said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that every­one makes mis­takes, an­oth­er staff mem­ber said: "His ac­tions have come back to haunt him like a blast from the past. He should have been straight­for­ward and said what he did." At the time of the in­ci­dent Kishore was a stu­dent at York Col­lege in New York.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Queens Couri­er, Kishore was pulled over on the Van Wyck Ex­press­way by Port Au­thor­i­ty po­lice for chang­ing lanes with­out sig­nalling. His mini­van had been mod­i­fied to look like a po­lice van and had a large po­lice de­cal on the rear door.

There were red and blue strobe lights on the front dash­board, as well as two De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (DHS) park­ing plac­ards. Kishore hand­ed over a black wal­let which con­tained a DHS Im­mi­gra­tion Cus­tom En­force­ment (ICE) iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card and an ICE shield.

When asked if he was a po­lice of­fi­cer, Kishore replied: "Yes, I am on du­ty." How­ev­er, when po­lice looked more close­ly, they spot­ted on the back of the shield the words: "Cop­shop.com, Col­lectible Badge, Not for Of­fi­cial Use."

Kishore was ar­rest­ed and po­lice searched his home in the Bronx where they found a cache of weapons in­clud­ing two stun guns, two pel­let guns and two starter pis­tols, a lam­i­nat­ing ma­chine, blank ID cards and sev­er­al pieces of forged law-en­force­ment para­pher­na­lia. He was charged with crim­i­nal im­per­son­ation, forgery and crim­i­nal pos­ses­sion of a weapon, a forged in­stru­ment and forged de­vices.

Asked if he felt if he be­lieved that he would have been able to get away from the po­lice of­fi­cers, Kishore said: "I tried some­thing but knew I had been caught."

Don't ask, don't tell

So why didn't Kishore dis­close his back­ground de­tails when be­ing in­ter­viewed? He told the Sun­day Guardian he felt be­cause the in­ci­dent hap­pened six years ago, he should be giv­en a chance to start over. How­ev­er, he said, if the ap­pli­ca­tion form had re­quired him to list de­tails of his back­ground, he would have con­fessed.

On fur­ther re­flec­tion, Kishore ad­mit­ted he should have re­vealed all. He said he was pre­pared for the se­vere con­se­quences he might now face. "At this point, I will deal with what­ev­er has to come my way. For me, the worst is over." In fact, he says he's re­lieved that his se­cret is out.

"Hon­est­ly, I am feel­ing a weight off my shoul­ders. I knew it would have come out soon­er or lat­er, but I did not know how to do it. "Young peo­ple do sil­ly things. I was un­der no oblig­a­tion to re­veal it, so I said noth­ing."

Why did he do it?

Kishore did not say when but re­vealed that he had been di­ag­nosed with ob­ses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der (OCD). He did not say if it was be­fore or af­ter he was charged. One thing was cer­tain, he was fix­at­ed on the po­lice.

"I al­ways want­ed to be a po­lice of­fi­cer. Now I have blown my chances of that ever hap­pen­ing. I col­lect­ed every­thing po­lice of­fi­cers are sup­posed to use and have. I just used to col­lect any­thing that po­lice­men will use. I got in over my head and I paid the price. It was a weird fix­a­tion," he said. The of­fence al­so caused him to lose his long­time girl­friend.

"We were sup­posed to get mar­ried, but af­ter I got ar­rest­ed, her fam­i­ly want­ed her to have noth­ing to do with me. "I came back home and I am try­ing to put the pieces back to­geth­er. "Since I came home I worked with the T&T Red Cross and as a first-aid and dis­as­ter lec­tur­er. This is my first sol­id job."

While Kishore did not re­veal what his ex­act qual­i­fi­ca­tions were he in­sist­ed that he was qual­i­fied for the job based on his work ex­pe­ri­ence. Tele­phone calls to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan for com­ment on this mat­ter were un­suc­cess­ful.

More In­fo

Ac­cord­ing to Med­i­cinenet.com OCD is an anx­i­ety dis­or­der char­ac­ter­isied by ir­re­sistible thoughts or im­ages (ob­ses­sions) and/or rigid be­hav­iours that may be dri­ven by ob­ses­sions. The most ef­fec­tive treat­ment for OCD is of­ten cog­ni­tive-be­hav­iour­al ther­a­py. An­ti­de­pres­sants are some­times used in con­junc­tion with ther­a­py, al­though med­ica­tion alone is rarely ef­fec­tive in re­liev­ing the symp­toms of OCD.