A South West­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice con­sta­ble was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the Fraud Squad af­ter he was caught try­ing to de­fraud a fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ance store on Thurs­day af­ter­noon. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 2:45 pm, the off du­ty of­fi­cer went to the Court Trinidad Lim­it­ed Branch in Pe­nal, where he al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to pur­chase an item with a cred­it card and a false dri­ver's per­mit.

The sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive who sus­pect­ed the fal­si­ty of the card, re­port­ed it to the man­ag­er who then con­tact­ed the po­lice. While search­ing the sus­pect, the of­fi­cers found two dri­ver's per­mit in his pos­ses­sion with the same pho­tos but dif­fer­ent names. He was ar­rest­ed and is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Siparia Mag­is­trate on Mon­day And al­so yes­ter­day two po­lice of­fi­cers yes­ter­day ap­peared in court charged charged for mis­be­hav­ior in pub­lic of­fice and per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice.

Cpl Ju­nior Bernard, 44 and PC Niki­ta John­son, 30 were not called up­on to plead when they ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Cheron Raphael in the Port-of- Spain Third Court. Bernard has 20 years ser­vice while John­son has two years ser­vice. The two are joint­ly charged that on vary­ing dates be­tween March 27 and May 12, they at­tempt­ed to per­vert the course of pub­lic jus­tice by ut­ter­ing a false search war­rant in the name of an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer, signed and stamped by San­gre Grande Jus­tice of the Peace, David M Tony. Bernard was al­so charged that on Feb­ru­ary 2 at the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post, and on March 28 at Plan­ta­tion Road, Va­len­cia, he mis­be­haved in pub­lic of­fice by ut­ter­ing fraud­u­lent search war­rants in the names of oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers, al­so signed and stamped by Tony.

Rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel, Is­rael Khan who was in­struct­ed by Ce­leste St Louis-the court heard the both de­fen­dants had fixed ad­dress­es and were will­ing to sur­ren­der their pass­ports. Khan said Bernard was the fa­ther of two, whose wife owned a car rental busi­ness in San­gre Grande; while John­son, a moth­er of one had no crim­i­nal record. The two were al­so or­dered to re­port to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion every Mon­day be­tween 6 am and 6 pm. The mat­ter was ad­journed to Au­gust 24. An­na- Lisa Paul and Kevon Felmine