Derek Achong

A li­censed firearm deal­er is seek­ing to pur­sue a law­suit chal­leng­ing the abil­i­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers to con­duct sev­er­al search­es on his busi­ness us­ing one search war­rant.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Luke Hadeed and his com­pa­ny As­ton En­ter­pris­es, which op­er­ates AE Tac­ti­cal, filed the ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ed sev­er­al search­es on his busi­ness over sev­er­al days ear­li­er this month.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the first raid took place on Oc­to­ber 8, a lit­tle over a week af­ter Sgt Matthew Hay­wood ob­tained a search war­rant from Jus­tice of the Peace Jer­ry Joseph.

Hay­wood and his col­leagues searched the busi­ness in the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and Hadeed’s home in Point Cumana and seized three mag­a­zines and 20 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, which Hadeed claims were cov­ered un­der his Firearm User’s Li­cense (FUL).

The of­fi­cers re­turned on the four days that fol­lowed to con­tin­ue their search of the com­pa­ny’s stock, books and records us­ing the same war­rant.

Hadeed’s lawyers, Om Lal­la, Dereck Bal­li­ram and Il­isha Maner­ikar, claimed that al­though he at­tempt­ed to leave on one of the days to seek ad­vice from them, he was barred from do­ing so. They claimed that on the day of the last search, Supt Dave Spence ac­com­pa­nied the of­fi­cers and in­spect­ed Hadeed’s records.

They filed the law­suit over the ac­tion and when it came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice gave an un­der­tak­ing that they would not seek to use the war­rant to con­duct fu­ture search­es.

Quin­lan-Williams set dead­lines for the par­ties to file sub­mis­sions on whether Hadeed should be grant­ed leave to pur­sue the law­suit and ad­journed her de­ci­sion on the is­sue to De­cem­ber 2.

Last Thurs­day, Supt Spence re­turned to the busi­ness and in­formed Hadeed that the au­dit in­to his busi­ness was com­plete and no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties were found.

In the court fil­ings, Hadeed’s le­gal team is claim­ing the war­rant was un­nec­es­sary, as un­der Sec­tion 26 (3) of the Firearm Act, firearm deal­ers are re­quired to sub­mit to au­dits con­duct­ed by se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers au­tho­rised by the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

“The ac­tions of the First and Sec­ond In­tend­ed De­fen­dants amount­ed to a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion in the face of a war­rant that has ex­pired, and which said search can be fa­cil­i­tat­ed un­der Sec­tion 26 of the Firearms Act,” Maner­ikar said.

In the pro­posed law­suit, Hadeed’s lawyers are al­so com­plain­ing about Sgt Hay­wood’s al­leged con­duct, as they claimed he sought to im­prop­er­ly high­light the search by po­si­tion­ing his cell­phone cam­era to show the busi­ness’ sign when he was at­tend­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing of an un­re­lat­ed case in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court they (the lawyers) were in­volved in on Oc­to­ber 12.

“The Sec­ond In­tend­ed De­fen­dant know­ing­ly and reck­less­ly, with­out car­ing whether the In­tend­ed Claimants were guilty of an of­fence, pub­lished and re­pub­lished the said video on the said plat­form with the sole de­sign of prej­u­dic­ing the In­tend­ed Claimants and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing con­duct­ed,” Maner­ikar said.

At­tached to the law­suit was an af­fi­davit from Hadeed, in which he de­tailed what tran­spired. In the doc­u­ment, which was filed be­fore the un­der­tak­ing was giv­en, Hadeed claimed he was con­cerned that the search­es would con­tin­ue with­out the court’s in­ter­ven­tion.

“I fear that if this un­law­ful ex­er­cise were to con­tin­ue, it would dam­age my busi­ness in such a way that it may be dif­fi­cult for me to re­cov­er,” Hadeed said.

Through the law­suit, Hadeed and his com­pa­ny are seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that Joseph did not have rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to sus­pect they com­mit­ted crim­i­nal of­fences when he grant­ed the war­rant.

They are al­so seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that Hay­wood act­ed in bad faith in se­cur­ing the war­rant and seek­ing to use it to al­leged­ly ma­lign Hadeed and his com­pa­ny’s rep­u­ta­tions. They al­so want the TTPS to re­turn the mag­a­zines and am­mu­ni­tion that were seized.

Pro­vid­ed that Hadeed is grant­ed leave to pur­sue the case lat­er this year, its even­tu­al out­come is like­ly to set a le­gal prece­dent and would guide the use of search war­rants by the TTPS in the fu­ture.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Hadeed is one of sev­er­al firearm deal­ers who have been probed as part of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the TTPS’s Firearms Unit.

Since the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched af­ter for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s con­tract end­ed, sev­er­al for­mer mem­bers of the unit were charged with crim­i­nal of­fences, in­clud­ing mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice in re­la­tion to an al­leged FUL vari­a­tion rack­et.

Ear­li­er this month, firearms deal­er Brent Thomas was charged with pos­ses­sion of pro­hib­it­ed au­to­mat­ic firearms and ex­plo­sives that were al­leged­ly found at his Mar­aval home. Thomas has been re­leased on $800,000 bail.