T&T Judge: War raging within police service by criminally-inclined officers

(Trinidad Guardian) A High Court judge has lament­ed that the war against crime has to be fought not on­ly on the streets but with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice where there are some er­rant and crim­i­nal­ly-in­clined of­fi­cers.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad made the com­ment as he ex­pressed out­rage that not on­ly has no ac­tion been tak­en against PCs Mur­ray Mo­hammed and Ron­nie Ed­wards who were ac­cused of kid­nap­ping, rob­bing and beat­ing civil­ian Clint At­tong in a po­lice sta­tion, but that Mo­hammed is cur­rent­ly at­tached to the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

“It is ev­i­dent that in this so­ci­ety there is not on­ly a war which is un­fold­ing by crim­i­nals on the streets of this Re­pub­lic but there is clear­ly a war rag­ing with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice where there are er­rant dis­hon­est and crim­i­nal­ly-in­clined po­lice of­fi­cers who are bring­ing the ser­vice in­to dis­re­pute and who are caus­ing ir­repara­ble harm and dam­age to the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice and there­fore the war against crime has to be fought both in­ter­nal­ly in the po­lice ser­vice and ex­ter­nal­ly with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment which abounds,” said Seep­er­sad.

The judge or­dered the de­fen­dants Mur­ray, Ed­wards, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and civil­ian Prem­c­hand Sookram to pay dam­ages to At­tong for as­sault and bat­tery and false im­pris­on­ment for five hours as well as ex­em­plary and ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages.

In ad­di­tion, the judge made a per­son­al or­der that Mur­ray re­pay At­tong with­in 48 hours $5,000 with three per cent in­ter­est per an­num from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to the date of the judg­ment. At­tong was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Alvin Bra­zier.

Ev­i­dence led in the case was that Sookram— At­tong’s for­mer su­per­vi­sor — had paid the po­lice to beat and force At­tong to sign a doc­u­ment at the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion.

At­tong, 35, a safe­ty of­fi­cer said on Oc­to­ber 29, 2011, he was wait­ing op­po­site a bar along Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road, Lib­ertville, Rio Claro, for Sookram when a ve­hi­cle stopped and Ed­wards ex­it­ed and point­ed a firearm at him. Mo­hammed then ex­it­ed, scram­bled At­tong, took way his two cell­phones and hand­cuffed him.

Short­ly af­ter a Hilux pick-up van, dri­ven by Sookram, stopped and the of­fi­cers shoved him in­to the van. While on the way to the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion, Mo­hammed con­tin­u­ous­ly punched him on the face and placed a gun on his thigh. Mo­hammed al­so took At­tong’s $5,000 which he was go­ing to use to buy a dog. He was tak­en to a room in the sta­tion where Mo­hammed be­gan beat­ing him all over his body with a PVC WASA hose. Sookram and an­oth­er of­fi­cer al­so took turns beat­ing him with the hose. At­tong said Sookram al­so struck him on his face with his (Sookram’s) leather slip­pers, telling him that he would have to sign some state­ments. At­tong was al­so or­dered to squat naked in the pres­ence of some pris­on­ers in an­oth­er room.

At­tong said the beat­ing con­tin­ued and even­tu­al­ly he signed a doc­u­ment af­ter Mo­hammed made a death threat to­wards him and his fam­i­ly. Ed­wards gave him $202, two cell­phones phones and his bank card and he was even­tu­al­ly re­leased with­out be­ing charged. At­tong sought med­ical at­ten­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He al­so went to the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion to make a re­port and was told to make a com­plaint to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty which he did.

“The fac­tu­al ma­trix which un­fold­ed and the fact find­ing that the court en­gaged in in this mat­ter in­stils in this court a sense of grave dis­qui­et and alarm, said Seep­er­sad in the San Fer­nan­do Supreme Court.

Ap­palled that no dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion has been ini­ti­at­ed against the of­fi­cers or no de­ci­sion tak­en in re­la­tion to crim­i­nal charges, par­tic­u­lar­ly kid­nap­ping and rob­bery, the judge di­rect­ed the Reg­is­trar to send the tran­script of the pro­ceed­ings and judg­ment to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to de­ter­mine whether crim­i­nal charges should be in­sti­tut­ed against the of­fi­cers.

He al­so strong­ly sug­gest­ed that the com­mis­sion­er make an im­me­di­ate de­ter­mi­na­tion re­gard­ing dis­ci­pli­nary charges against Mo­hammed. The judge al­so said the time has come for every po­lice sta­tion to have op­er­a­tional CCTV sur­veil­lance cam­eras and for each of­fi­cer to be out­fit­ted a body cam­era when he leaves the sta­tion. He said such a sys­tem will pro­tect both the pub­lic and the po­lice of­fi­cers.

Dam­ages and costs are to be as­sessed by a Mas­ter in Cham­bers.

At­tong, who broke down in tears dur­ing the rul­ing. said this has been a eight- year le­gal bat­tle which he has pulled through with God’s help. How­ev­er, he said not all po­lice of­fi­cers should be paint­ed in a neg­a­tive way.

He en­cour­aged the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to sup­port the po­lice.