Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

A 39 year old po­lice of­fi­cer with 19 years ser­vice was yes­ter­day freed of charges re­lat­ed to the pos­ses­sion of wild meat. The mat­ter was heard be­fore Mag­is­trate Du­ane Mur­ray in the To­ba­go court.

PC Ke­ston Kirk, of Sher­wood Park, To­ba­go was ar­rest­ed on April 29, 2015 at Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. He had been on sus­pen­sion for the last four years, charged with il­le­gal­ly hav­ing 17 igua­nas in his pos­ses­sion.

The court heard that on the said date, Kirk went fish­ing at Ca­noe Bay and on his way out, gave a man who had been hunt­ing a lift in his ve­hi­cle.

The po­lice and Game War­dens tes­ti­fied that they had been ob­serv­ing the two men hunt­ing for three hours and when they were fin­ished and dri­ving out, they stopped and searched the ve­hi­cle and found the an­i­mals.

Both men were ar­rest­ed.

Kirk was rep­re­sent­ed by Mar­tin George who made le­gal sub­mis­sions that the State had not proven its case against his client.

Wit­ness­es for the State in­clud­ed for­mer su­per­in­ten­dent Jef­frey George and Game War­den John Ed­wards among oth­ers.

The mat­ter was pros­e­cut­ed by at­tor­neys from the DPP’s of­fice who trav­elled from Trinidad for the pros­e­cu­tion.

Af­ter con­sid­er­ing the legal­sub­mis­sions of the DPP’s of­fice and George, Mur­ray dis­missed the case against Kirk.

George said he now plans to pre­pare High Court pro­ceed­ings to sue the State for dam­ages and com­pen­sa­tion for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion of his client, who main­tained his in­no­cence, as he in­di­cat­ed that the 17 igua­nas be­longed to an­oth­er per­son whom he had giv­en a lift in his car.