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Saturday, May 17, 2025

Beetham brothers win $.6m in wrongful arrest case against TTPS

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709 days ago
20230607
Attorney Kareem Marcelle, second from left, and his brothers Kern, left, and Kevin, chat with their lawyer, Senior Counsel Larry Lalla, after the trial of their case at the Waterfront Judicial Centre in Port-of-Spain in May.

Attorney Kareem Marcelle, second from left, and his brothers Kern, left, and Kevin, chat with their lawyer, Senior Counsel Larry Lalla, after the trial of their case at the Waterfront Judicial Centre in Port-of-Spain in May.

DEREK ACHONG

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist and at­tor­ney-at-law Ka­reem Mar­celle and his two old­er broth­ers have won a col­lec­tive $.6 mil­lion from the state in a wrong­ful ar­rest and as­sault and bat­tery case against the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

The rul­ing was hand­ed down by High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Quin­lan-Williams award­ed $618,000 in dam­ages, or $206,000 for each Mar­celle broth­er, plus in­ter­est.

In the law­suit, Mar­celle and his broth­ers, Kern and Kevin, of Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain, had con­tend­ed that a group of po­lice of­fi­cers used a sledge­ham­mer to en­ter their house through the back door on June 27, 2018, be­fore threat­en­ing them dur­ing a search.

They claimed the of­fi­cers knocked down the doors to two bed­rooms where two of the broth­ers were sleep­ing.

Mar­celle, who was nude in his bed, fur­ther claimed he was threat­ened by one of the of­fi­cers, who did not al­low him to get dressed be­fore hand­cuff­ing him.

The sib­lings and a fe­male friend re­mained un­der watch un­til the search was com­plet­ed.

Mar­celle re­port­ed­ly asked to in­spect the war­rant but claimed he was on­ly al­lowed a brief glance.

The broth­ers claimed the of­fi­cers act­ed in an un­pro­fes­sion­al man­ner dur­ing the search un­til they learned that Mar­celle was a law stu­dent and schol­ar­ship win­ner.

The broth­ers claimed they were in­ter­ro­gat­ed by po­lice be­fore be­ing re­leased with­out be­ing charged, as noth­ing il­le­gal was found in their home.

In the law­suit, the broth­ers claimed the po­lice of­fi­cers tres­passed on the prop­er­ty, as the search war­rant used in the raid was ma­li­cious­ly pro­cured.

Through the law­suit, they sought com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­aged doors, an in­jury to the wrist Mar­celle al­leged­ly sus­tained from the hand­cuffs and dam­ages for the an­guish and em­bar­rass­ment they suf­fered.

Lar­ry Lal­la SC rep­re­sent­ed the broth­ers.


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