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.