Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Fif­teen mem­bers of the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) have filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the State over the al­leged fail­ure to pay them a month­ly spe­cial du­ty al­lowance for vary­ing pe­ri­ods.

The mat­ter came be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad in the High Court yes­ter­day, in which the of­fi­cers are seek­ing re­dress for al­leged breach­es of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights un­der Sec­tion 4(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, in­clud­ing the right to se­cu­ri­ty of the per­son and en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty.

The claimants are Roger John­ston, Nor­bert Red­man, Milkha Singh, Ger­ald Ockille, Leon Lyons, Sher­man Jor­dan, Noel Le Gen­dre, Harold Begg, Cloudio Thor­pe, Aden Thomas, Ian Flo­res, Mervyn Her­cules, Sher­wyn Sargeant, Dex­ter Nichols and Pe­ter Thomas, who is de­ceased.

The of­fi­cers, who are rep­re­sent­ed by Phillip A Wil­son & Co, are seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion from the court, an or­der com­pelling the State to pay the $1,000 month­ly al­lowance, as well as vin­di­ca­to­ry and ex­em­plary dam­ages.

Ac­cord­ing to the claim, the of­fi­cers served with the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) and the Crim­i­nal Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit (CGIU) for vary­ing pe­ri­ods be­tween 2012 and 2018.

They con­tend­ed that Le­gal No­tice No 26 of 2013, made un­der Sec­tion 17A of the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Act, pro­vides for the pay­ment of a $1,000 month­ly du­ty al­lowance to SRP of­fi­cers.

The claimants al­leged that de­spite car­ry­ing out their du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), they were nev­er paid the al­lowance dur­ing their pe­ri­od of ser­vice.

Court doc­u­ments stat­ed that the of­fi­cers made sev­er­al at­tempts to re­solve the is­sue through in­ter­nal com­plaints, ap­peals to for­mer com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice, cor­re­spon­dence with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quests and en­gage­ment with the Of­fice of the Om­buds­man.

The of­fi­cers, through their at­tor­neys, al­so sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed Ju­ly 31, 2025, to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, but no re­sponse was re­ceived.

Hav­ing re­gard to the Le­gal No­tice which made pro­vi­sions for the of­fi­cers to be paid, the judge said he was hav­ing some dif­fi­cul­ty un­der­stand­ing why the sums of mon­ey were not paid to them.

At­tor­ney Mary Davis, who is rep­re­sent­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, along with Krys­ta Jal­im, in­di­cat­ed that she re­cent­ly re­ceived hard copies in the case and has to take in­struc­tions.

How­ev­er, she said the de­fence may be fil­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the claim on the grounds of abuse of process, ar­gu­ing that the claimants ought to have pur­sued al­ter­na­tive pro­ce­dures be­fore fil­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, which was usu­al­ly a last re­sort.

The judge said they could file the ap­pli­ca­tion, but it may be dif­fi­cult to con­vince the court that the of­fi­cers’ rights have not been vi­o­lat­ed.

Davis re­quest­ed an ad­journ­ment near the end of June, but the judge re­ject­ed the re­quest, stat­ing that it was “in­or­di­nate­ly long” and that the State must act with some de­gree of alacrity.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to June 15.