Derek Achong

Scores of peo­ple were heard scream­ing and cry­ing out­side the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court yes­ter­day as their rel­a­tives-sev­en po­lice of­fi­cers-charged with the mur­der of three friends in south Trinidad were led to a prison van bound for the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca. Mere hours be­fore their trans­fer, the of­fi­cers, who were for­mer­ly as­signed to the San Fer­nan­do CID and Rob­bery Squad, were treat­ed to a lunch of chick­en and chips that was hand-de­liv­ered to the court's hold­ing cells. Their rel­a­tives, who lined the court's cor­ri­dors and the St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, en­trance to the court, wait­ed pa­tient­ly and were giv­en the brief op­por­tu­ni­ty to greet and speak to them in the cells be­fore they were ush­ered to­wards the ve­hi­cle.

The of­fi­cers-Cpl Kham­raj Sa­hadeo and Po­lice Con­sta­bles An­to­nio Ramd­hin, Glen Singh, Roger Nicholas, Re­nal­do Rivero, Safraz Ju­man and Nicole Clement-ap­peared be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar in the Port-of-Spain Eighth Court charged with the mur­ders of Al­lana Dun­can, Abi­gail John­son and Ker­ron "Fin­gers" Ec­cles. Clement is the moth­er of a four-month-old ba­by. The of­fi­cers stood mo­tion­less, with their arms fold­ed, as the three charges of mur­der were read to them by Ay­ers-Cae­sar. It was al­leged that Dun­can, 28, of Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, John­son, 20 and Ec­cles, 26, of St Mary's Vil­lage, Moru­ga, were killed by the of­fi­cers on Ju­ly 22 at the cor­ner of Poui Trace and Rochard Road, Bar­rack­pore.

They were all pas­sen­gers in a Nis­san B 15 at the time of the in­ci­dent. Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter their deaths, out­raged res­i­dents of St Mary's Vil­lage, Moru­ga, be­gan protest ac­tion, block­ing roads in the area with burn­ing tyres and oth­er de­bris. Their protest prompt­ed the re­sponse of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Gillian Lucky, who vis­it­ed the area and as­sured res­i­dents and fam­i­ly mem­bers that a speedy and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be con­duct­ed. Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, who led the de­fence team for the men yes­ter­day, re­quest­ed the mat­ter be ex­pe­dit­ed. Khan said: "This mat­ter should take prece­dent over all the cur­rent mur­der in­quires that are be­fore the courts."

He al­so ex­pressed his shocked and amaze­ment over the charges against the of­fi­cers. "In all my years as an at­tor­ney, I have nev­er seen in the his­to­ry of T&T, sev­en of­fi­cers charged with mur­der while they were per­form­ing their du­ties," Khan said. He re­quest­ed dis­clo­sure of all rel­e­vant ev­i­dence in the mat­ter gath­ered by the po­lice, in­clud­ing sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts, foren­sic analy­sis of the po­lice ve­hi­cle that was al­leged­ly shot at by the friends be­fore their death and the trio's crim­i­nal record. Bal­lis­tic analy­sis of all weapons used by the of­fi­cers was al­so re­quest­ed by Khan. He al­so plead­ed with Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard to is­sue guid­ance on me­dia re­port­ing deal­ing with the mat­ter.

Khan claimed the mat­ter al­ready was be­ing tried in the pub­lic do­main through ra­dio talk shows and across so­cial me­dia plat­forms. When the mat­ter was called at around 10.30 am, Gas­pard ap­peared be­fore Ay­ers-Cae­sar and told the court he (Gas­pard) would be lead­ing the pros­e­cu­tion in the mat­ter. He al­so clar­i­fied mis­lead­ing re­ports in the me­dia that the of­fi­cers were charged with 21 counts of mur­der, say­ing each of­fi­cer was joint­ly charged with the oth­er of­fi­cers for the mur­der of each vic­tim. He (Gas­pard) as­sured the court the mat­ter would be ex­pe­dit­ed. Be­fore the mat­ter was ad­journed, Khan al­so asked Gas­pard for spe­cial prison arrange­ments for the of­fi­cers while in re­mand, in­clud­ing iso­la­tion from oth­er pris­on­ers who may have dealt with the of­fi­cers in the past.

Gas­pard agreed and promised to con­tact Pris­ons Com­mis­sion Mar­tin Mar­tinez per­son­al­ly to make the arrange­ments. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Mar­tinez con­firmed arrange­ments al­ready had been made for the of­fi­cers at the max­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­i­ty. Mar­tinez said: "These of­fi­cers are our broth­ers. They are in­no­cent un­til proven guilty. "These of­fi­cers have had deal­ings with crim­i­nal el­e­ments that are cur­rent­ly in the prison sys­tem and will be giv­en sep­a­rate treat­ment but not spe­cial treat­ment." He said that cour­tesy nor­mal­ly was af­ford­ed to high pro­file in­mates to pro­tect them in the prison en­vi­ron­ment.

Last Thurs­day, six of the sev­en of­fi­cers were ar­rest­ed in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing at their homes in south Trinidad with the fi­nal sus­pect sur­ren­der­ing short­ly af­ter to Homi­cide de­tec­tives of Re­gion III, Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion. They were then tak­en to sev­er­al po­lice sta­tion across north Trinidad where they were in­ter­ro­gat­ed by spe­cial­ly as­signed de­tec­tives. The men were charged late Mon­day evening on the or­ders of Gas­pard, af­ter his re­view of the file on the mat­ter which was com­piled by the re­cent­ly-es­tab­lished Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

The head of the unit, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Ray­mond Craig, the com­plainant in the mat­ter, ap­peared in court yes­ter­day. Emo­tion­al rel­a­tives of the al­leged vic­tims, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, al­so at­tend­ed yes­ter­day's court hear­ing and de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter. The group's le­gal team al­so in­cludes at­tor­neys Ra­jiv Per­sad, Sub­has Pan­day, Ul­ric Sker­ritt, John Heath and Raphael Mor­gan. The mat­ter was ad­journed to No­vem­ber 15 and trans­ferred to the Princes Town Mag­is­trates' Court, the dis­trict in which the trio were killed.