The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­SWA) has of­fi­cial­ly joined the on­go­ing le­gal bat­tle sur­round­ing the pro­mo­tion as­sess­ment process to the rank of As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice (ASP).

In­spec­tor Mark Her­nan­dez, for­mer head of the now-dis­band­ed Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), ini­ti­at­ed the law­suit, chal­leng­ing the pro­mo­tion process as flawed and al­leg­ing breach­es of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act and Reg­u­la­tions. An in­junc­tion grant­ed by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Oc­to­ber 3 halt­ed the ASP pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise pend­ing the case’s out­come.

The TTP­SWA, led by ASP Gideon Dick­son and rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Kings­ley Wales­by, filed to join the pro­ceed­ings to ad­vo­cate on be­half of its mem­bers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise.

Per­mis­sion was even­tu­al­ly grant­ed by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad.

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to join the law­suit came af­ter Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Natasha George, ad­mit­ted in an af­fi­davit that she mis­tak­en­ly ad­vised Odyssey Con­sult­Inc Lim­it­ed, the firm hired to over­see the pro­mo­tions, to al­low all can­di­dates to ad­vance to the sec­ond stage of the process re­gard­less of fail­ing the ex­am stage.

In her af­fi­davit, George sug­gest­ed that com­ments made by the TTP­SWA’s pres­i­dent in­flu­enced her de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, Dick­son re­ject­ed these claims, stat­ing they could erode con­fi­dence in the as­so­ci­a­tion’s lead­er­ship. He stressed that mem­bers had not been giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fend their po­si­tion or re­spond to these ac­cu­sa­tions.

The TTP­SWA ar­gued that its in­ter­ests di­verge from those of the de­fen­dants—name­ly, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Odyssey Con­sult­Inc Lim­it­ed—and that it must in­ter­vene to pro­tect the rights of its mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those near­ing re­tire­ment.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed, when the ap­pli­ca­tion was made, that the pro­mo­tion process im­pacts all of­fi­cers who par­tic­i­pat­ed and em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of hear­ing var­i­ous per­spec­tives. “I have dif­fi­cul­ty with any po­si­tion that as­serts there is no in­ter­est in this mat­ter by or on be­half of the mem­ber­ship of the As­so­ci­a­tion.”

He high­light­ed the need for com­pre­hen­sive in­put to en­sure pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness in the ju­di­cial re­view.

This case, along­side a sim­i­lar chal­lenge by In­sp Vene­ta Weaver-Ali, rais­es ques­tions about trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the po­lice ser­vice’s pro­mo­tion sys­tem. The TTP­SWA had said it was in­un­dat­ed with re­quests from of­fi­cers urg­ing it to in­ter­vene, par­tic­u­lar­ly as some can­di­dates face com­pul­so­ry re­tire­ment at age 55.

Her­nan­dez is rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Ger­ald Ramdeen and Dayadai Har­ri­paul, while Weaver-Ali is rep­re­sent­ed by a team in­clud­ing Jagdeo Singh and Vashisht Seep­er­sad. Se­nior Coun­sel Dass leads the State’s le­gal team, sup­port­ed by Coreen Find­ley, Akee­nie Mur­ray, and Ka­dine Matthew.