Trinidad: Cop brothers charged

(Trinidad Guardian) Two po­lice of­fi­cers have been charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a male vic­tim which oc­curred in March 2018.

A re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said PC Jonathan Bart, 26, who has five years’ ser­vice and was last at­tached to the West­ern Di­vi­sion Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion Di­vi­sion and his broth­er, PC Justin Bart, 24, who has four years’ ser­vice and was last at­tached to the West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, were charged with the of­fence fol­low­ing ad­vice re­ceived from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard SC, on Wednes­day 9th Oc­to­ber 2019.

 
It said the vic­tim, a 30-year-old man, told po­lice that on March 18th 2018, he was at a gro­cery in St. James, when he was con­front­ed by two po­lice of­fi­cers who as­sault­ed him. He said he in­formed them that he was go­ing to re­port the in­ci­dent and pro­ceed­ed to the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion.

It added that the two of­fi­cers al­leged­ly fol­lowed him there and whilst he was mak­ing the re­port, they ar­rest­ed him.

The TTPS said the vic­tim was kept in cus­tody and on the fol­low­ing date, he was charged by one of the of­fi­cers for the of­fences of use of ob­scene lan­guage, re­sist­ing ar­rest and as­sault­ing the po­lice in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ty.

It stat­ed that the re­port of the in­ci­dent was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by of­fi­cers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB), which re­sult­ed in the two of­fi­cers be­ing ar­rest­ed on Mon­day 7th Oc­to­ber 2019.