Resh­ma Ra­goonath

A St Clement's, Princes Town man who beat his girl­friend and as­sault­ed two po­lice of­fi­cers while in a drunk­en rage has been slapped with a to­tal of $2,100 in fines. Trades­man David Fin­ly, 27, was sen­tenced on Thurs­day af­ter he plead­ed guilty to five charges aris­ing out of the Jan­u­ary 28, 2012 in­ci­dent.

Fin­ly, who spent the past four months in cus­tody, ap­peared be­fore San Fer­nan­do Fourth Court Mag­is­trate Ali­cia Chankar and opt­ed to change his plea from not guilty to guilty. His at­tor­ney, Sharmil­la Ram­paul, said Fin­ly was sor­ry for his ac­tions and was will­ing to apol­o­gise. She said her client was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing re­la­tion­ship prob­lems, and "be­ing drunk, he took it to an un­rea­son­able lev­el."

Fin­ly was charged with as­sault­ing WPC Man­sook and PC Con­stant, re­sist­ing ar­rest, us­ing ob­scene lan­guage and un­law­ful­ly as­sault­ing and beat­ing his girl­friend Fea Brown. All five of­fences oc­curred on Mu­cu­rapo Street, San Fer­nan­do. Chankar or­dered Fin­ly to pay $500 for as­sault­ing Con­stant and Man­sook and re­sist­ing ar­rest or serve 30 days hard labour on each charge. He was al­so fined $400 or 60 days for beat­ing Brown and $200 for us­ing ob­scene lan­guage.

He was or­dered to pay the fines forth­with. The sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly. Ram­paul, in Fin­ly's de­fence, said his moth­er was not "con­don­ing" his be­hav­iour. She said his fam­i­ly chose not to have him re­leased on bail. How­ev­er, Mag­is­trate Chankar cor­rect­ed the at­tor­ney by ob­serv­ing Fin­ly was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody.

Ram­paul said Fin­ly learnt the er­ror of his ways af­ter spend­ing four months in cus­tody. She said while he has a five month-old ba­by, Brown was not the moth­er. "That may be the source of the prob­lem," she said. Ram­paul asked for a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence. She said he had one con­vic­tion.

Po­lice Pros­e­cu­tor, Sgt Rus­sel Ra­moutar, told the court on Jan­u­ary 28 Ma­sook and Con­stant, both of whom are at­tached to the San Fer­nan­do City Po­lice, were on pa­trol along Mu­cu­rapo Street when they re­spond­ed to a re­port of a dis­tur­bance. They ap­proached and saw Fin­ly and Brown ar­gu­ing. The woman told po­lice, "This man beat me up be­fore and he now beat me again."

The court was told that Con­stant held Fin­ly's hand to ar­rest him but he pulled away while us­ing ob­scene lan­guage. Man­sook then at­tempt­ed to as­sist Fin­ly and he pushed her away and struck her on her hands. How­ev­er Fin­ly was sub­dued and ar­rest­ed by Con­stant. Af­ter be­ing cau­tioned, he told Man­sook, "WPC let meh sex you up nah."

Fin­ly was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do City Po­lice post where act­ing Cpl Singh charged him.He re­port­ed­ly told the of­fi­cer, "I did the crime, I will do the time." Ra­moutar al­so ten­dered three med­ical cer­tifi­cates on be­half of Man­sook, Con­stant and Brown.