A po­lice of­fi­cer who once sued the po­lice ser­vice and won is now its main de­fend­er as he as­sumed the po­si­tion of Head Le­gal last week.

Act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Ram­dath Phillip was as­signed to the post by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin and as­sumed his role Mon­day, tak­ing over from act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent Lu­cien Fer­gu­son. 

Phillip, who is be­lieved to be the on­ly po­lice of­fi­cer to go from con­sta­ble to in­spec­tor in the his­to­ry of the TTPS, was vic­to­ri­ous against the State in 2018.

Phillip, of Princes Town, joined the Po­lice Ser­vice in Feb­ru­ary 2003 and com­plet­ed his bach­e­lor’s de­gree in law with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don in 2007. In Oc­to­ber 2010, Phillip was called to the Bar and pro­mot­ed as a le­gal of­fi­cer in the South­ern Di­vi­sion. Phillip’s at­tor­neys ar­gued then that he should have been ex­empt­ed from writ­ing any qual­i­fy­ing ex­am­i­na­tions for pro­mo­tion with­in the sec­ond di­vi­sion all the way up to the rank of a po­lice in­spec­tor. Phillip still wrote the ex­ams and passed but was de­nied a pro­mo­tion and sued the State.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Phillip said he hopes to bring his ex­pe­ri­ence to his new role.

“Well ex­act­ly that, I plan to learn from what hap­pened in my mat­ter and to try to en­sure that the TTPS is not found in the same po­si­tion it was in, in my mat­ter.”

The po­si­tion of Head Le­gal was brought back un­der for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith when at­tor­ney Chris­t­ian Chan­dler was ap­point­ed.

Phillip, like Chan­dler, hopes to have his le­gal of­fi­cers high­ly trained and so be able to tack­le se­nior de­fence at­tor­neys.

“Our re­la­tion­ship with the DPP’s of­fice has al­ways been there and will con­tin­ue to be there. I in­tend to bridge the gap even more. Not on­ly with re­spect to the ad­vice on mat­ters, but train­ing for the po­lice of­fi­cers, train­ing for the lawyers with­in the po­lice ser­vice. So, I in­tend to meet with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion and chart a way for­ward so that bond could be clos­er than what it is right now.”

Phillip said he plans to set­tle on­go­ing mat­ters, in­clud­ing po­lice mat­ters.

“In terms of what I in­tend to bring, (to the role) well, a num­ber of mat­ters that are head­ing in the di­rec­tion of lit­i­ga­tion, ei­ther from po­lice of­fi­cers or mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who may feel that they may have been wronged by po­lice of­fi­cers by their ac­tions. So, I in­tend to take a deep dive in­to those mat­ters and see how best we can fa­cil­i­tate them and try to set­tle them out of court.”

With cas­es in the past be­ing thrown out be­cause po­lice of­fi­cers failed to at­tend court, Phillip said with the vir­tu­al court and the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, that should be a thing of the past. How­ev­er, he as­sured that he would ad­dress in­stances where ab­sent of­fi­cers cause the col­lapse of court cas­es.

On his first day, Phillip said he will be ad­dress­ing two ma­jor is­sues, that be­ing a lack of re­sources and a man­pow­er short­age. He did not com­mit to say­ing how he planned to achieve that though.