Geisha Kow­lessar

The Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day filed an in­junc­tion against Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs seek­ing to stop the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive. The is­sue has cre­at­ed con­tention, with the as­so­ci­a­tion ac­cus­ing Gibbs of breach­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions.

The top cop was served with the no­tice of the ap­pli­ca­tion for the in­junc­tion around 2 pm yes­ter­day. The mat­ter will be heard in the In­dus­tri­al Court in Port-of-Spain be­fore its pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Sgt Anand Rame­sar con­firmed that the doc­u­ments had been filed.

Rame­sar al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the is­sue had not been re­solved and had now be­come a le­gal mat­ter. "I was re­al­ly hop­ing this was not the di­rec­tion the mat­ter would have tak­en," Rame­sar added. Asked whether he be­lieved this would de­stroy the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the as­so­ci­a­tion and the com­mis­sion­er, Rame­sar re­spond­ed: "The com­mis­sion­er would have de­stroyed that re­la­tion­ship on his own.

"There would have been sev­er­al oc­ca­sions where the com­mis­sion­er has failed to treat with is­sues and these would have been sim­ple is­sues. "So it would have amount­ed to a build-up of many is­sues," Rame­sar said. He added that a no­tice of the ap­pli­ca­tion was al­so served to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Stephanie Lewis.

On March 20, Gibbs was served with a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter which was signed by the as­so­ci­a­tion's sec­re­tary Sgt Michael Seales. Both Rame­sar and Seales are at­tor­neys and will be rep­re­sent­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion when the mat­ter comes up for hear­ing.

The as­so­ci­a­tion, which claimed the project was in­ef­fec­tive, al­so ac­cused Gibbs of act­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly when it came to de­ci­sion-mak­ing. The first phase of the ini­tia­tive was launched on April 4, 2011 at the West End Po­lice Sta­tion in the West­ern Di­vi­sion, an area plagued with vi­o­lent crime and gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

In the pre-ac­tion let­ter Rame­sar al­so claimed of­fi­cers were be­ing called out to work on their off-days and if they re­fused they were served with a let­ter, warn­ing of dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion. It al­so iden­ti­fied var­i­ous al­leged breach­es of reg­u­la­tions, which in­clude dis­crep­an­cies in meal and over­time al­lowances, work­ing hours and the gen­er­al de­ploy­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers whose di­vi­sions fall un­der the ini­tia­tive.