JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

The call for a ‘weed­ing out’ of cor­rupt mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has been made again, this time from the chair­man of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber, Mar­tin George.

Speak­ing on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show, George ar­gued that “very strong and very clear sig­nals” must be sent to po­lice of­fi­cers.

Last week, two po­lice of­fi­cers were charged in con­nec­tion with the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of used car deal­er Sachel Kunge­be­har­ry, while men dressed in po­lice gear were seen on CCTV footage tak­ing away Cunu­pia busi­ness­man Su­vesh Ram­nar­ine, for whose re­lease a $3 mil­lion ran­som has been de­mand­ed.

An at­tor­ney-at-law and a for­mer mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, George be­lieves more can be done to de­tect and in­fil­trate the ac­tiv­i­ties of rogue of­fi­cers.

He as­serts that po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties should face swift and se­vere con­se­quences and is call­ing on Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher to do more.

“The Com­mis­sion­er has the pow­er of dis­missal. The Com­mis­sion­er can dis­miss of­fi­cers from the Ser­vice,” George points out.  “So, these pow­ers need to be ex­er­cised in a very strong and strin­gent man­ner if you in­tend to weed out [cor­rupt] of­fi­cers.”

“It makes no sense that you have po­lice of­fi­cers who are charged … still re­ceiv­ing a salary,” he ar­gues.  “So, they are charged [with a crime], and if some of them come out on bail, they’re re­ceiv­ing a salary still, and they’re free to com­mit crim­i­nal acts. What is the point of that? We’re pay­ing them to be crim­i­nals.  We need to be more de­ci­sive.”

Mar­tin George main­tains that trust and con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice must be re­stored.

“When you are dis­miss­ing and ter­mi­nat­ing of­fi­cers for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, you need to do that pub­licly.  You need to do the nam­ing and sham­ing,” he stat­ed. 

“First of all, the pub­lic will know that you are tak­ing de­ci­sive ac­tion, and you are deal­ing with these of­fi­cers,” he points out.  “And oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers will recog­nise that there are con­se­quences—and peo­ple are be­ing dealt with in a very se­ri­ous way—for break­ing the law as po­lice of­fi­cers.”

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man not­ed that se­ri­ous, vi­o­lent crime con­tin­ues to es­ca­late in To­ba­go, de­spite the ad­di­tion of po­lice of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force and Guard and Emer­gency Branch.