Kevon Felmine

Amid on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to an al­leged as­sault on an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer by an Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty (AA) es­tate con­sta­ble, the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) has come for­ward to de­fend the con­sta­ble, say­ing that he act­ed with­in the scope of his du­ties.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, EPA pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son main­tained that the con­sta­ble was sim­ply per­form­ing his se­cu­ri­ty du­ties when the con­fronta­tion oc­curred. “This was not an as­sault,” Richard­son stressed.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Tues­day, chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer Mary Rosanne St Hill-Bilouin ex­pressed con­cern, is­su­ing a no­tice to her staff. She de­scribed the con­fronta­tion as part of an “on­go­ing es­ca­la­tion in ag­gres­sion” by AA se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to­wards im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers. St Hill-Bilouin as­sured her team that in­ves­ti­ga­tions are un­der­way and vowed that the mat­ter “will not go un­ad­dressed.”

Some im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers warned of po­ten­tial dis­rup­tions to air­port op­er­a­tions if their safe­ty con­cerns re­main un­ad­dressed.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, the Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer III, who su­per­vis­es the 2 pm to 10 pm shift, pre­sent­ed his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card at the se­cu­ri­ty check­point at a glass par­ti­tion, fol­low­ing stan­dard pro­ce­dure. The of­fi­cer turned to pro­ceed to his shift when the con­sta­ble pur­sued him, placed him in a head­lock, and forcibly re­strained him in plain sight of trav­ellers.

Richard­son, how­ev­er, al­leged that the of­fi­cer at­tempt­ed to by­pass the se­cu­ri­ty check­point while the con­sta­ble was at­tend­ing to an­oth­er pas­sen­ger. He claimed the of­fi­cer was re­quired to wait briefly for his cre­den­tials to be ver­i­fied, which takes less than a minute.

Ac­cord­ing to Richard­son, the con­sta­ble in­struct­ed the of­fi­cer to re­turn to the check­point to com­plete the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process. How­ev­er, the of­fi­cer, Richard­son claimed was not in uni­form, al­leged­ly ig­nored the in­struc­tion. Sur­veil­lance footage re­port­ed­ly showed the con­sta­ble pur­su­ing and re­strain­ing the of­fi­cer. Richard­son ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that the of­fi­cer sub­se­quent­ly filed a po­lice re­port and al­leged­ly threat­ened to “shut down the place.”

Vedesh Bhag­wan­deen, EPA first vice pres­i­dent, and AA cor­po­ral high­light­ed the crit­i­cal role of es­tate con­sta­bles in se­cur­ing the re­strict­ed ar­eas of both Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Es­tate po­lice are tasked with en­sur­ing on­ly au­tho­rised per­son­nel gain ac­cess to these zones, a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they take se­ri­ous­ly to up­hold in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion safe­ty stan­dards.

Bhag­wan­deen ex­plained that in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing ac­cess must present of­fi­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards or board­ing pass­es that meet spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments, such as in­clud­ing a pho­to­graph and an ex­piry date. Sim­ply flash­ing a card with­out ver­i­fi­ca­tion, he said, is un­ac­cept­able.

“Our job is to pro­tect civ­il avi­a­tion from un­law­ful in­ter­fer­ence. If some­one gains ac­cess with­out prop­er checks and some­thing hap­pens, we will be held ac­count­able. That is why these se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures ex­ist. It is not about a strug­gle or a fight,” Bhag­wan­deen said.

He added that the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process is swift, typ­i­cal­ly tak­ing less than 20 sec­onds. He ques­tioned why the of­fi­cer could not wait to com­plete the re­quired steps.

“Have you ever tried to by­pass the line at Im­mi­gra­tion or Cus­toms? These pro­ce­dures ex­ist for a rea­son. The of­fi­cer gave a law­ful in­struc­tion to re­turn to the check­point, and that is the bot­tom line,” Bhag­wan­deen said.

Both the po­lice and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

The EPA has called for mu­tu­al re­spect and un­der­stand­ing among all air­port agen­cies to en­sure smooth op­er­a­tions and safe­ty. Richard­son claimed the con­sta­ble’s ac­tions were aligned with his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, urg­ing all per­son­nel to co­op­er­ate in main­tain­ing high-se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards.