A man who want­ed to be­come a po­lice of­fi­cer af­ter his fa­ther was killed dur­ing a home in­va­sion and who was barred from en­ter­ing be­cause of two tat­toos, has been award­ed $300,000. 

In a judg­ment dat­ed March 12, High Court Judge West­min James found that the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of Daawu­ud Mo­hammed were in­fringed. 

As a re­sult, he ruled that Mo­hammed be award­ed $25,000 as com­pen­sa­tion for loss of chance; $125,000 for dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience suf­fered and $150,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages. The State was al­so or­dered to pay his le­gal costs.  

“The De­fen­dant shall pay statu­to­ry in­ter­est on the afore­men­tioned sums at a rate of 5% per an­num, from the date of judg­ment un­til full pay­ment is made” James added. 

In June 2023, Mo­hammed was told he need­ed to re­move the tat­toos on his right bi­ceps and left tri­ceps, to com­plete the en­try re­quire­ments, which was a fi­nal in­ter­view. This came two years af­ter he be­gan the en­try process and through­out the var­i­ous phys­i­cal and writ­ten ex­ams had the tat­toos and was not told to re­move them. 

While in the process of re­mov­ing the tat­toos, Mo­hammed said he re­peat­ed­ly vis­it­ed the Po­lice Acad­e­my for an up­date on his pend­ing ac­cep­tance but was not giv­en any feed­back. 

Af­ter the po­lice’s tat­too pol­i­cy was deemed il­le­gal in Oc­to­ber 2023 by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, Mo­hammed said he sought an up­date from the Po­lice Ser­vice with re­gards to him com­plet­ing his en­try re­quire­ments but was not giv­en any pos­i­tive feed­back. 

He be­gan le­gal pro­ceed­ings last year and it was on­ly af­ter that that he was fi­nal­ly per­mit­ted to com­plete his fi­nal in­ter­view and com­mence train­ing in Ju­ly 2024. 

James ruled that: “The Court can­not con­done the ar­bi­trary, un­fair, and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry na­ture of the TTPS's tat­too pol­i­cy. Be­yond af­fect­ing in­di­vid­u­als with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice, the pol­i­cy sends a broad­er so­ci­etal mes­sage about ex­clu­sion and non-ac­cep­tance. By up­hold­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices based on phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance, the TTPS alien­ates po­ten­tial re­cruits and un­der­mines pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment. In light of these fac­tors, I agree that the de­fen­dant’s in­sis­tence on main­tain­ing an out­dat­ed and rigid tat­too pol­i­cy has re­sult­ed in pal­pa­ble in­jus­tice for in­di­vid­u­als like the claimant.”