An as­sault charge against In­spec­tor Roger Alexan­der and an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer has been dis­missed be­cause the State’s case failed to get off the ground.

Alexan­der and PC Shel­don Mires were dis­charged by Mag­is­trate Nizam Khan af­ter pros­e­cu­tors from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) at­tempt­ed to de­lay the start of the tri­al for an eighth time.

The de­ci­sion clears the way for the of­fi­cers, who were sus­pend­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pend­ing the out­come of the case, to be re­in­stat­ed in­to ac­tive du­ty.

The TTPS can al­so de­cide if they can re­turn to their roles on its night­ly tele­vi­sion show Be­yond the Tape.

Pri­or to be­ing charged, Alexan­der co-host­ed the show, while Mires guest starred in the show’s crime pre­ven­tion seg­ment as a char­ac­ter who re­peat­ed­ly got caught com­mit­ting crimes.

Dur­ing the hear­ing be­fore Khan in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, on Tues­day, Anasta­cia Mc Meo, a pros­e­cu­tor from the DPP’s Of­fice re­quest­ed an ad­journ­ment as As­sis­tant DPP Tri­cia Hudlin-Coop­er and se­nior pros­e­cu­tor Mau­ri­ceia Joseph, who are as­signed to the case, were pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in the Court of Ap­peal.

How­ev­er, she could not ex­plain why Hudlin-Coop­er and Joseph failed to in­form the court and the of­fi­cers’ de­fence at­tor­neys of the de­vel­op­ment.

Khan then gave her an op­por­tu­ni­ty to open the State’s case and be­gin pre­sent­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny of two of the State’s wit­ness­es. Al­though the wit­ness­es were present for the hear­ing, the State at­tor­ney was un­will­ing to do so in the ab­sence of the as­signed pros­e­cu­tors.

She al­so could not give an ac­count of the third wit­ness, who had missed pre­vi­ous hear­ings of the case due to ill­ness.

In con­sid­er­ing an im­promp­tu ap­pli­ca­tion to dis­miss the case made by at­tor­neys for the of­fi­cers, Khan said he bal­anced the se­ri­ous na­ture of the charges, the pub­lic’s in­ter­est in the case and the nu­mer­ous of times pros­e­cu­tors sought ad­journ­ments due to is­sues of track­ing down wit­ness­es.

“The State can not drag on the mat­ter like this for­ev­er,” Khan said.

The charges arose out of an in­ci­dent near Christo­pher Charles’ home at San­ta Cruz Old Road in Ju­ly 2016.

Charles re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to po­lice but de­cid­ed to file pri­vate crim­i­nal charges. The DPP’s Of­fice then in­ter­vened and took over the pros­e­cu­tion of the case.

Alexan­der and Mires were ac­cused of as­sault­ing Charles with in­tent to cause him ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm. Mires was al­so fac­ing an ad­di­tion­al charge for com­mit­ting com­mon as­sault.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Alexan­der for com­ment on the de­vel­op­ment in the case but he did not an­swer sev­er­al calls made to his cell­phone.

Alexan­der was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, and Lee Mer­ry, while John Heath rep­re­sent­ed Mires.