An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj yes­ter­day hint­ed that vir­tu­al court hear­ings may soon re­sume at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, as Gov­ern­ment seeks to al­le­vi­ate some of the stress placed on of­fi­cers at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Re­veal­ing this as he spoke with re­porters fol­low­ing a vis­it to the St Vin­cent Street cour­t­house, which re­mains large­ly un­der ren­o­va­tion, he said, “We vis­it­ed a spe­cif­ic area in the Mag­is­trates’ Court in an ef­fort to al­le­vi­ate a prob­lem in many po­lice sta­tions in Trinidad.”

He said they had start­ed with a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, ac­knowl­edg­ing the pres­sure of­fi­cers at the Besson Street sta­tion were fac­ing with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for host­ing vir­tu­al hear­ings.

“They are un­der a lot of stress with the vir­tu­al court­rooms,” he said.

Fol­low­ing a vis­it to the Besson Street sta­tion on Mon­day, he re­mind­ed, “A lot of their rooms have to be used as vir­tu­al court­rooms, thus pre­vent­ing the po­lice from ef­fi­cient­ly car­ry­ing out their du­ties. So we are look­ing to see whether, in the short term, we can get a place in the Mag­is­trates’ Court where these vir­tu­al court­rooms can be ef­fect­ed quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.”

He added, “We vis­it­ed a part of it, and it looks very promis­ing.”

He re­fused to dis­close which part of the cour­t­house they had found favour with, but said this will be re­vealed af­ter dis­cus­sions with the Ju­di­cia­ry.

Asked what would hap­pen to the rest of the build­ing once this area was or­gan­ised, he said, “The rest of the cour­t­house has been un­der ren­o­va­tion for some time, and ren­o­va­tions and re­fur­bish­ment of court build­ings are un­der the purview of the Jus­tice Min­istry, so we are tak­ing a very close look at all of these fa­cil­i­ties and what has been on­go­ing to see how we can speed up the process.

“With the man­date giv­en to us, I am hop­ing as soon as pos­si­ble, by next week, we can get a word on this.”

He said the iden­ti­fied area would have to be cus­tom-built for the par­tic­u­lar pur­pose in mind.

Asked if the pub­lic could ex­pect to see a re­sump­tion in terms of court ap­pear­ances by de­tained peo­ple, the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted, “I think it will even­tu­al­ly boil down to a hy­brid sit­u­a­tion, as a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion may re­quire in-per­son, but gen­er­al­ly, the move is to­wards vir­tu­al.”

He said all stake­hold­ers had agreed vir­tu­al court was the way to go, but a clear op­er­a­tional plan was what was need­ed now.

Ma­haraj was al­so asked his min­istry’s stance as it per­tained to of­fi­cers en­ter­ing the cour­t­house with their firearms, to which he promised a re­sponse lat­er on.

Ar­riv­ing short­ly af­ter Ma­haraj’s vis­it con­clud­ed and he left, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said there was on­ly one so­lu­tion to the sit­u­a­tion.

“We just need to fix it.”

He pre­dict­ed that once the at­ten­dant is­sues were ad­dressed, there would be “a smooth tran­si­tion from what they want­ed to do, what they can do, and what is be­ing done now.”

Alexan­der said, “The po­lice have com­plained, right­ful­ly so, be­cause some ma­jor rooms that were used for pur­pose have since been tak­en away.

“If we can find a way to give them back that space, I can see this thing work­ing out quite well. Tech­nol­o­gy has been em­braced by all, now more than ever, so we would not al­low that to pass us by, but tech­nol­o­gy must al­so in­cor­po­rate com­fort, giv­ing per­sons the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do their job and, at the same time, achiev­ing their goal.”

The for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer added, “There were some struc­tur­al ad­just­ments and strate­gic po­si­tion­ing that we need to treat with in the court­rooms to avoid pos­si­bil­i­ty, or the like­li­hood of some­thing un­to­ward hap­pen­ing.”