Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

In award­ing $.5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to a Cou­va cou­ple in a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case, a High Court judge said a strong mes­sage has to be sent against po­lice of­fi­cers abus­ing their pow­er.

In find­ing that po­lice of­fi­cers fab­ri­cat­ed ev­i­dence against Kevin and Na­talia Bar­row, who was then five months preg­nant, Jus­tice Ricky Rahim said the of­fi­cers act­ed high-hand­ed­ly.

Through their at­tor­ney Ab­del Mo­hammed, the cou­ple sued the State for false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion af­ter the po­lice searched their home twice and sub­se­quent­ly charged them with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion.

In his rul­ing, the judge said, “The ac­tions dis­played dis­re­gard the sanc­ti­ty of the rule of law and the rights of the in­di­vid­ual not to be the sub­ject of ar­bi­trary use and abuse of pow­er by the po­lice. It is one of the worst in­ci­dents of such abuse to have come be­fore this court, and a strong mes­sage must be sent in re­spect of the con­cert­ed ac­tions of the of­fi­cers on both days.”

Ac­cord­ing to the court doc­u­ments, the cou­ple was at their Cou­va home around 6.45 pm on May 25, 2016, with their chil­dren, when the po­lice kicked down the back door and “stormed in­to” their home. They were not shown a search war­rant.

Kevin was ar­rest­ed and de­tained in a cell at the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion from 7.30 pm un­til the fol­low­ing day around 4.15 pm.

Af­ter her hus­band was re­leased with­out be­ing charged, Na­talia said she com­plained to the “of­fi­cer in charge,” showed him a record­ing she had done of the in­ci­dent, and in­formed him that she would be mak­ing a re­port at the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty the fol­low­ing day.

How­ev­er, around 6.50 am the fol­low­ing day (May 27, 2016), while she was leav­ing home to vis­it the PCA, the po­lice ar­rived and showed her an al­leged war­rant. 

The po­lice searched the house in Na­talia’s pres­ence but found noth­ing il­le­gal. She said their chil­dren were cry­ing.

The cou­ple claimed three of­fi­cers went back in­to their home, in their ab­sence, and that was when the of­fi­cers al­leged they found mar­i­jua­na. 

The cou­ple was ar­rest­ed, tak­en to the po­lice sta­tion and placed in ad­ja­cent “nasty” cells, which had an “in­tol­er­a­ble stench” of fae­ces and urine.

The po­lice took Na­talia to a health fa­cil­i­ty af­ter she be­gan feel­ing un­well.

She re­turned to the cell around noon. They were charged and re­leased 15 hours lat­er af­ter ac­cess­ing sta­tion bail. 

The cou­ple plead­ed not guilty be­fore a mag­is­trate and in April 2018 the mat­ter was dis­missed due to the non-ap­pear­ance of the po­lice com­plainant.

In a writ­ten de­ci­sion, the judge stat­ed that there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port the po­lice claim that there was in­for­ma­tion that Kevin had an out­stand­ing war­rant or that nar­cotics were be­ing sold at the cou­ple’s home.

The judge al­so found no ev­i­dence of a search war­rant for the first search or the mar­i­jua­na al­leged­ly found af­ter the sec­ond search. 

Not­ing that the po­lice ap­peared to be “mo­ti­vat­ed by ill will and spite,” the judge said, “The court there­fore finds that not on­ly do the facts of the lack of rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause amount to mal­ice in this case by its very na­ture of fab­ri­ca­tion of ev­i­dence but that the sur­round­ing cir­cum­stances tell a sor­did tale of ac­tu­al mal­ice on the part of the po­lice by way of in­fer­ence.”

The State was or­dered to pay gen­er­al and ex­em­plary dam­ages, in­ter­est and le­gal costs.