De­spite an al­le­ga­tion that she at­tempt­ed to per­vert the course of jus­tice in 2023 and was the sub­ject of a probe as head of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB), in a mat­ter which re­mains in abeyance, Suzette Mar­tin will con­tin­ue as the Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Re­spond­ing to a sto­ry that sur­faced on the week­end, in which it was claimed that a se­nior of­fi­cer in­volved in the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher had her­self been ac­cused of mis­han­dling two firearm-re­lat­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions, act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon, yes­ter­day said up­on see­ing it in black and white, he was aware and sat­is­fied that, “in my mind, that mat­ter was dealt with.”

At the time of the al­le­ga­tion by Sgt Sean Hay­wood, Si­mon had oc­cu­pied the post of DCP, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, and was the one who had been in charge of ad­vis­ing the ju­nior of­fi­cer.

Pro­vid­ing some con­text dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, the new­ly ap­point­ed DCP re­called send­ing that re­port “for ad­vice from two of our se­nior le­gal ad­vi­sors in the TTPS, and the ad­vice came back, re­turned ... ad­vis­ing that the mat­ter may need some more beef to it, some more meat as you would call it, just for the un­der­stand­ing of the lis­ten­ing pub­lic, to say that this is some­thing we should be look­ing in­to.”

Re­fer­ring to the ad­vice re­ceived then, Si­mon added, “What was writ­ten was in­ter­est­ing and it need­ed some more ev­i­dence I would say, to ac­tu­al­ly sug­gest that, rather than be­ing spec­u­la­tive and be­ing some­thing of con­jec­ture, you need some­thing more ev­i­den­tial.

“I ad­vised the sergeant in par­tic­u­lar of the find­ings of the le­gal of­fi­cers, and I ad­vised him of the meth­ods, the ap­proach­es, per­haps even the ev­i­den­tial type that he can seek and bring be­fore me that would al­low an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be launched.”

Claim­ing the of­fi­cer had ac­knowl­edged his ad­vice at the time, Si­mon said, “He asked for some more time, that I had giv­en him, to pro­duce the ev­i­dence.

“That ev­i­dence, that pro­duc­tion, did not and has not ma­te­ri­alised since that time, and the mat­ter rest­ed there for that time, await­ing that ev­i­dence that will push any­thing for­ward.”

He as­sured that the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive was ad­dress­ing the mat­ter.

Al­so asked to con­firm whether re­ports that a se­nior of­fi­cial in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Hare­wood-Christo­pher had al­so been trans­ferred, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin de­clined to an­swer di­rect­ly.

In­stead, he said, “I can tell you, how­ev­er, that we are very par­tic­u­lar in terms of how we deal with this mat­ter.”

Ben­jamin said the con­tin­u­ing probe in­to Hare­wood-Christo­pher re­mained un­der the purview of DCP Mar­tin.

The top cop was ar­rest­ed and de­tained on Jan­u­ary 30 in an on­go­ing crim­i­nal probe in­to the ac­qui­si­tion of two sniper ri­fles for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

She was re­leased from cus­tody on Feb­ru­ary 1 but sub­se­quent­ly sus­pend­ed from of­fice by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) pend­ing the out­come of probe.