Jesse Ramdeo

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is fac­ing con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings over its fail­ure to com­ply with or­ders made by a pre­sid­ing Judge in a case in­volv­ing the seizure of guns and am­mu­ni­tion from a gun deal­er.

Last month, Towfeek Ali, own­er of Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute Ltd, filed a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over the abil­i­ty of the TTPS, un­der the Firearms Act, to con­duct an au­dit dur­ing which time Ali’s firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were seized.

On Jan­u­ary 24, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad grant­ed an in­junc­tion or­der­ing the TTPS to re­turn Ali’s firearms and am­mu­ni­tion pend­ing the out­come of the case. Af­ter the han­dover was com­plete, Ram­per­sad wrote to TTPS Le­gal Of­fi­cer Adi­ta Ram­du­lar, in­di­cat­ing that 500 of the 1,230 rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion that was seized from her client was not re­turned.

In re­sponse, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher or­dered a probe in­to the al­leged miss­ing am­mu­ni­tion by the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing yes­ter­day, mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal asked Hare­wood-Christo­pher about the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged dis­ap­pear­ance of the am­mu­ni­tion that was seized by po­lice of­fi­cers.

“You will re­call in re­cent times you called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­le­ga­tion where 500 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion is al­leged to be miss­ing from the po­lice cus­tody. I have in my hand a doc­u­ment which was served to your of­fice ear­li­er to­day, the le­gal de­part­ment of your of­fice, I imag­ine by now you would have been in­formed,” Mooni­lal said.

“It is an af­fi­davit pur­suant to an im­pend­ing mat­ter at the court for con­tempt pro­ceed­ings against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, where it is al­leged that am­mu­ni­tion, weapons and so on were seized in cer­tain cir­cum­stances and the TTPS, ac­cord­ing to this doc­u­ment and the ex­hibits that are at­tached, the TTPS signed off on what was tak­en and so on.

“Af­ter a judg­ment, they were asked to re­turn the am­mu­ni­tion and firearms and so on and they could not re­turn 500 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and they have not un­til this mo­ment and pro­ceed­ings are un­der way.”

Asked about the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the CoP was un­able to com­ment, not­ing she had not seen the lat­est le­gal cor­re­spon­dence.

JSC chair­man Kei­th Scot­land cau­tioned Hare­wood-Christo­pher from com­ment­ing on a mat­ter she was not aware of.

Mooni­lal said he was will­ing to present her with the doc­u­ment on the spot, but he was ad­vised against do­ing so by Scot­land.

“If it’s a mat­ter be­fore the court, maybe be­fore you pro­ceed any fur­ther, hav­ing not seen the doc­u­ment is an ac­cept­able an­swer,” Scot­land told the CoP.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal con­tend­ed, “Mr chair­man, with great re­spect, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice can in­di­cate the sta­tus of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion which is in the pub­lic do­main.”