Sev­en Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers ap­peared in court yes­ter­day charged with of­fences re­lat­ed to an ex­tra-du­ty scam.

Mar­vin Bas­combe, Nicole Stephens, Amoy Black­ette, Ker­ry-Ann Alexan­der, Moni­fa David, Van­da O’Neil and Liz Fran­cis ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Maris­sa Gomez in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court.

Gomez was on­ly re­quired to grant bail to O’Neil, as her col­leagues were grant­ed be­tween $80,000 and $120,000 bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace af­ter be­ing charged by de­tec­tives of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) on Mon­day evening. Gomez even­tu­al­ly grant­ed $100,000 in bail to the moth­er of three from San­ta Cruz.

All sev­en of­fi­cers, who were last as­signed to the High­way Pa­trol and Traf­fic Branch, each re­ceived be­tween one and four charges for con­spir­ing to­geth­er to de­fraud Toy­ota (T&T) Lim­it­ed by mak­ing false and in­flat­ed ex­tra-du­ty claims for var­i­ous days be­tween June to Sep­tem­ber last year.

In ad­di­tion to those charges, Stephens, of Pey­tonville, Ari­ma, was charged with four sep­a­rate charges for al­leged­ly de­fraud­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) by sub­mit­ting er­ro­neous ex­tra-du­ty pay­roll doc­u­ments for her and her col­leagues.

While po­lice pros­e­cu­tor In­sp Ra­jesh Lall did not ask Gomez to re­con­sid­er the bail that was pre­vi­ous­ly grant­ed, he did re­quest that each of­fi­cer re­port to their near­est po­lice sta­tion once a week for the du­ra­tion of the case. Gomez agreed with the con­di­tion of the bail.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Lall al­so in­formed the group’s lawyers that in­ves­ti­ga­tors would be­gin to dis­close their ev­i­dence against the of­fi­cers at the next hear­ing.

The po­lice of­fi­cers were ac­com­pa­nied by a large group of their rel­a­tives and friends for the hear­ing.

The group was rep­re­sent­ed by a team of at­tor­neys in­clud­ing Pamela El­der, SC, Sophia Chote, SC, Ian Brooks, Shel­don Nor­eiga, Ter­ry Boy­er, Fa­reed Ali, Pe­ter Carter and Adri­an Thomp­son.

They are ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on May 7.