Geisha Kow­lessar

An ur­gent call is be­ing made to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to launch a thor­ough probe in­to a top po­lice of­fi­cer who the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion claims has brought the Po­lice Ser­vice in­to dis­re­pute and em­bar­rass­ment. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, made the call af­ter for­mer Coast Guard Com­man­der Gar­net Best of Bar­ba­dos Road, Fed­er­a­tion Park, St Clair, was is­sued a traf­fic tick­et last Jan­u­ary 10. The se­nior of­fi­cer, how­ev­er, wrote to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard re­quest­ing that the tick­et be dis­al­lowed. The of­fi­cer cit­ed that the tick­et giv­en to Best was un­fair­ly and un­just­ly giv­en and brought the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the po­lice of­fi­cer who is­sued the tick­et in­to ques­tion. Rame­sar al­so is urg­ing that the mat­ter be thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. A copy of the tick­et was ob­tain by the T&T Guardian and the par­tic­u­lars read that on Jan­u­ary 10, 2012 at 7.32 am at Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, Best breached a traf­fic sign which dis­al­lowed a right turn.

The tick­et is­sued a fixed penal­ty of $1,000 and or­dered to be paid be­fore March 19. It is un­der­stood, how­ev­er, that the se­nior of­fi­cer wrote to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard ask­ing that the tick­et be dis­al­lowed. A copy of the let­ter sent to Gas­pard, al­so ob­tained by the T&T Guardian and signed by the se­nior of­fi­cer, car­ried the sub­ject, "Fixed Penal­ty Tick­et B651661, Nolle Pros­eque Re­quest for:" The se­nior cop wrote: "I shall be grate­ful if you would con­sid­er of­fer­ing no ev­i­dence in the above stat­ed mat­ters which are due for hear­ing on March 19, 2012 at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court." In cit­ing the "brief facts" to the DPP, the se­nior po­lice­man said on Jan­u­ary 10, 2012 a ve­hi­cle, dri­ven by re­tired Com­modore Gar­net Best, was pro­ceed­ing along Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, and made a right turn to en­ter Sackville Street. How­ev­er, the se­nior of­fi­cer stat­ed, with­in the past two weeks a no right turn sign was placed there, lim­it­ing en­try to traf­fic be­tween pre­scribed hours. In de­fend­ing Best, the of­fi­cer wrote there were "no of­fi­cers at the point to in­di­cate oth­er­wise," caus­ing Best to pro­ceed on­to Sackville Street.

The se­nior of­fi­cer fur­ther stat­ed that as Best en­tered Sackville Street, "an of­fi­cer emerged from a side street and is­sued him a fixed penal­ty tick­et #B651661 for breach of traf­fic sign." "I am aware of your (Gas­pard) pre­vi­ous ad­vice in sim­i­lar mat­ters but due to the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the is­su­ing of this tick­et, I feel com­pelled to ad­dress you again in the in­ter­est of jus­tice and fair­ness. "In an ef­fort to re­store some bal­ance your kind in­ter­ven­tion in not pros­e­cut­ing the of­fence men­tioned above is gra­cious­ly sought," the se­nior of­fi­cer wrote Gas­pard. In de­fence of is­su­ing the tick­et, Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble Maris­sa Jack, of the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion, strong­ly sup­port­ed her de­ci­sion to give Best the tick­et, in­sist­ing all pro­ce­dures were done above board.

In Jack' s state­ment which al­so was for­ward­ed to the DPP, she said that around 7.32 am on Jan­u­ary 10, 2012 she ob­served a dark-coloured ve­hi­cle Jeep/SUV turn­ing right from the west-bound lane of Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on­to Ed­ward Street. "As the ve­hi­cle turned and was pro­ceed­ing north along Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain, I ob­served the ve­hi­cle's reg­is­tra­tion num­ber, PCL 22.

"I went to the cen­tre of the street and made a stop sig­nal and caused the ve­hi­cle to come to a stop. "I told the dri­ver my num­ber, rank and name. I told the dri­ver of the PCL ve­hi­cle 22 that he made an il­le­gal turn and I point­ed to the road signs on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, and I told him there are signs in­di­cat­ing that it is il­le­gal to turn right from Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain west-bound on­to Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain, and al­so no U-turn be­tween the hours of 6 am to 9 am and 3 pm to 6 pm Mon­day to Fri­day, ex­cept pub­lic hol­i­days," Jack stat­ed. She said when she in­quired from Best as to why he breached the traf­fic sig­nal he re­spond­ed that he "did not see the sign." Jack's state­ment was sup­port­ed by a state­ment from Cpl Prim­c­hand Seep­er­sad, al­so of the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion, who was al­so on du­ty at the time when Best was is­sued the tick­et. In a mem­o­ran­dum sent from the DPP on Jan­u­ary 25, 2012, Gas­pard stat­ed Best must pay the tick­et hav­ing "con­sid­ered all the cir­cum­stances."

Take ac­tion - Rame­sar

Ac­cord­ing to the ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­tions of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the se­nior of­fi­cer can­not be dis­ci­plined and there­fore the com­mis­sion must thor­ough­ly probe the mat­ter and rec­om­mend the nec­es­sary ac­tion, Rame­sar said. He cit­ed that the in­ci­dent was "nev­er favourable to the progress to good ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice." "It is an em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion and it must be some­thing that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion must con­sid­er," he added.