DEREK ACHONG

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad is ex­pect­ed to rule on a law­suit over the pro­mo­tion as­sess­ment process for the rank of As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice (ASP) on Feb­ru­ary 18. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad set the dead­line af­ter hear­ing the cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of the wit­ness­es in the case dur­ing a hear­ing yes­ter­day. 

In the law­suit, In­spec­tor Mark Her­nan­dez is claim­ing that the pro­ce­dure used dur­ing the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise, last year, breached the Po­lice Ser­vice Act and as­so­ci­at­ed reg­u­la­tions. 

Her­nan­dez is con­tend­ing that col­leagues with­out per­for­mance ap­praisals were al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise.

 His lawyers claim that he and oth­er of­fi­cers re­ceived blan­ket “out­stand­ing” rat­ings with­out their per­for­mance be­ing crit­i­cal­ly as­sessed. 

They sug­gest­ed that the “uni­ver­sal mark pro­ce­dure” was con­trary to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) mer­it-based sys­tem of pro­mo­tion pol­i­cy. 

Af­ter Her­nan­dez and a col­league In­spec­tor Vene­ta Weaver-Ali both filed sim­i­lar cas­es over the is­sue, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Natasha George de­nied any wrong­do­ing in re­la­tion to the ap­praisals but ad­mit­ted to an­oth­er er­ror in the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise. 

In her af­fi­davit, George ad­mit­ted that she wrong­ly ad­vised Odyssey Con­sult­inc Lim­it­ed, which was hired by the TTPS to as­sist with the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise, to al­low all par­tic­i­pants to ad­vance to the sec­ond stage of the three-tiered process even if they failed to at­tain the pass mark in the ex­am­i­na­tion stage. 

She claimed that she was sub­se­quent­ly ad­vised that on­ly the “top per­form­ing can­di­dates” could ad­vance based on the reg­u­la­tions. 

While be­ing quizzed yes­ter­day, George re­fused to ad­mit that all of­fi­cers were giv­en out­stand­ing rat­ings in their ap­praisals as claimed. 

She al­so de­nied that the leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions were breached. 

In his ev­i­dence, Odyssey’s chief ex­ec­u­tive An­tho­ny Watkins ad­mit­ted that his com­pa­ny on­ly re­ceived the per­for­mance ap­praisals at the in­ter­view stage which fol­lowed the ex­am­i­na­tion. 

He al­so ad­mit­ted that George and TTPS ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers sug­gest­ed al­low­ing par­tic­i­pants in the ex­am to ad­vance de­spite their scores dur­ing a meet­ing and did not pro­vide writ­ten in­struc­tions. 

“We heard the sug­ges­tion and con­sid­ered it be­fore mak­ing our in­de­pen­dent de­ci­sion to pro­ceed,” he said. 

Asked for the ra­tio­nale for not on­ly se­lect­ing the top can­di­dates, he not­ed that on­ly 12 of­fi­cers of the over 100 that par­tic­i­pat­ed failed to at­tain the 50 per cent pass mark. 

“The col­lec­tive group re­ceived top per­for­mances. There was no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween the marks re­ceived,” he said. 

When it was his turn to tes­ti­fy, Her­nan­dez claimed that he was fa­mil­iar with the ap­praisal process as he per­formed as­sess­ments of of­fi­cers un­der his su­per­vi­sion dur­ing his over two-decade-long ca­reer. 

He claimed that he learned that he and his col­leagues re­ceived blan­ket scores by ask­ing them. He al­so de­nied that a score of “out­stand­ing” is un­com­mon.   

Her­nan­dez was the head of the now-de­funct Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), which was es­tab­lished un­der the tenure of for­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith. 

How­ev­er, he has been on sus­pen­sion since May 2021, when he was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice in re­la­tion to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the treat­ment of the sus­pects held for the ab­duc­tion and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt in­clud­ing two, who died while in po­lice cus­tody. There is no le­gal im­ped­i­ment for of­fi­cers to be pro­mot­ed while they have pend­ing crim­i­nal cas­es. 

Her­nan­dez was rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen and Dayadai Har­ri­paul. Weaver-Ali was rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Ka­ri­na Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Sav­it­ri Sama­roo, and Vashisht Seep­er­sad. Rishi Dass, SC, Coreen Find­ley, Akee­nie Mur­ray and Ka­dine Matthew rep­re­sent­ed the CoP.