An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice con­sta­ble at­tached to the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion has been ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the theft of $1 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na from the sta­tion’s “strong room.”

The of­fi­cer, who has five years of ser­vice, was de­tained by se­nior of­fi­cials of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) yes­ter­day.

Al­though no charges were laid up to last evening, Guardian Me­dia was told he will be charged with sev­er­al of­fences, in­clud­ing mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

The ar­rest fol­lowed an al­most one-month-long in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the brazen theft, which saw 20 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na be­ing re­moved from the sta­tion and re­placed with neat­ly pack­aged bricks and sty­ro­foam.

The drugs were ini­tial­ly seized on Sep­tem­ber 6, dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tion at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to a drug ship­ment, of­fi­cers from the Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Op­er­a­tions Unit, con­duct­ed a tar­get­ed op­er­a­tion around 4.20 pm and seized the nar­cotics, which had been pack­aged in 82 black pack­ets, four brown pack­ets, two trans­par­ent pack­ets, and one red pack­et.

Three men be­tween the ages of 26 and 42, from Trinci­ty and Ch­agua­nas, were ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion of cannabis for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

The drugs were lat­er lodged at the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion and stored in what of­fi­cers use as the strong room dur­ing the night when the prop­er­ty keep­er is off du­ty.

The case took an un­usu­al twist as days lat­er, the drugs were dis­cov­ered miss­ing from the sta­tion dur­ing a fol­low-up by a po­lice of­fi­cer on Sep­tem­ber 15.

De­scrib­ing the of­fi­cer’s ac­tions as “shame­ful” yes­ter­day, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial said, “When of­fi­cers do things like this, it not on­ly im­pacts the of­fi­cer and his fam­i­ly, but paints the TTPS in a bad light.”

The of­fi­cer said the dis­graced law­man’s ac­tions, and sim­i­lar ac­tions of cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion with crim­i­nal el­e­ments by oth­er of­fi­cers, were up­set­ting and frus­trat­ing the ef­forts they were em­ploy­ing to win back the pub­lic’s trust.

He said, “We are work­ing hard to re­gain that trust and show the pub­lic that they can come to us with any­thing, but when of­fi­cers do things like this, it doesn’t help.”

Say­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was in­tent on stamp­ing out cor­rup­tion with­in the TTPS, the se­nior of­fi­cial said so­ci­ety al­so had to share the blame.

“We don’t pick of­fi­cers from the sky. These are the per­sons that are com­ing to us, and there are peo­ple who know them, so when we ask for you to tell us about their in­tegri­ty, trust­wor­thi­ness, hon­esty, and over­all abil­i­ty to be a good of­fi­cer, and you refuse...this is where we are now.”

How­ev­er, he said, “We won’t let the hand­ful of bad ap­ples among us spoil the im­age of the TTPS and de­rail what we are try­ing to achieve in re­gain­ing the pub­lic’s trust.”