DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.ott

The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) is fac­ing le­gal ac­tion from a lo­cal busi­ness­man ac­cus­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) of stor­ing false and mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion in its data­base about him.

Michael Er­rol St John in­struct­ed for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, and Om Lal­la to send a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to clear his name.

The let­ter was sent on Fri­day, and a re­port was al­so sent to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty. The top cop has 14 days to re­spond.

St John owns a suc­cess­ful mu­sic pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny, Tow­er Pro­mo­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, and D’Di­al Fit­ness Club at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James, Ari­ma, and One Wood­brook Place.

He sur­vived an at­tack on his life af­ter he was shot in the face on Jan­u­ary 11 near his gym in Long Cir­cu­lar Mall. The en­tre­pre­neur is be­lieved to be seek­ing med­ical at­ten­tion in the Unit­ed States.

In a me­dia con­fer­ence at Lal­la’s of­fice on St Vin­cent Street in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj ex­plained that his client’s hu­man and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights have been in­fringed up­on.

He said St John at­tempt­ed to get a green card in 2017 and was told by an of­fi­cer dur­ing his in­ter­view at the Unit­ed States Em­bassy that there was in­for­ma­tion against him, which made him in­el­i­gi­ble. St John con­duct­ed “in­ves­ti­ga­tions” af­ter he was de­nied and re­ceived screen­shots of in­for­ma­tion about him said to be con­tained in a po­lice sys­tem called Ver­sadex.

Eight years and a few at­tor­neys lat­er, St John has been un­able to clear his record, which his lawyers say is hurt­ing his rep­u­ta­tion.

“It has af­fect­ed his trad­ing and busi­ness in­ter­ests, which re­quire him to ap­ply for li­cences, reg­u­la­to­ry per­mits, in­sur­ance, and loans for his busi­ness­es. This has posed a sig­nif­i­cant ob­sta­cle to his busi­ness,” Ma­haraj said.

He fur­ther warned that any cit­i­zen can fall vic­tim to this form of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and da­ta stor­age.

“You can go and get sev­er­al cer­tifi­cates of good char­ac­ter and clean records, but you do not know what some­body is record­ing against you,” he warned.

“If this sys­tem con­tin­ues, the TTPS can give you a clean record cer­tifi­cate, a cer­tifi­cate of good record, but on a Ver­sadex sys­tem on a TTPS data­base, you have in­for­ma­tion about your­self which is not true and which could be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to em­bassies, banks, in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, what­ev­er it is, dam­age and de­stroy your rep­u­ta­tion, but the in­for­ma­tion can­not be cor­rect­ed by the TTPS,” he added.

The for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al said un­der Sec­tions 36 and 39 of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA), which he pi­o­neered, a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty must cor­rect in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion about an in­di­vid­ual, fail­ing which the ag­griev­ed can seek a ju­di­cial re­view from the High Court.

Ma­haraj fur­ther ex­plained that St John is not af­ter mon­ey but clear­ing his rep­u­ta­tion.

“He has made it clear to us that he is not main­ly in­ter­est­ed in dam­ages or com­pen­sa­tion. His main aim is to vin­di­cate his rep­u­ta­tion and his char­ac­ter, and if the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice cor­rects the record to re­flect what is in his cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter, he doesn’t want to file any claim, he doesn’t want any dam­ages, and he doesn’t want any com­pen­sa­tion. He just wants jus­tice. He wants his name to be cleared,” he said.

“I urge the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to take steps to cor­rect this is­sue. Please do not al­low this man to have to go to court to try and get jus­tice. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice can cor­rect this in­jus­tice,” he added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ma­haraj called on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, led by the Prime Min­is­ter, to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent.

“Now, the let­ter from the Com­mis­sion of Po­lice did not dis­pute that there is a Ver­sadex sys­tem in the TTPS. They have not dis­put­ed that. But they have not ad­mit­ted it. But it seems to me that it is pos­si­ble that the TTPS has sev­er­al data­bas­es. One sys­tem is a sys­tem to give you a cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter. An­oth­er sys­tem might be a sys­tem in which they pro­file in­di­vid­u­als.”

Em­pha­sis­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of his client’s con­cern, Lal­la ques­tioned if the TTPS data­base was com­pro­mised. He al­so in­quired if oth­er in­di­vid­u­als with busi­ness­es had pos­si­bly faced sim­i­lar chal­lenges un­know­ing­ly.

“How do we en­sure that there is in­tegri­ty in this sys­tem in an age of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, that your char­ac­ter and your rep­u­ta­tion can be de­stroyed with a sim­ple en­try?” Lal­la ques­tioned.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact the top cop for com­ment but re­ceived no re­sponse.