Derek Achong

A po­lice con­sta­ble ac­cused of as­sault­ing a man dur­ing In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions in Clax­ton Bay has been de­tained by the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau of the Po­lice Ser­vice. The 30-year-old of­fi­cer was ar­rest­ed at his home in south Trinidad yes­ter­day morn­ing. He was last as­signed to the St Mar­garet's Po­lice Sta­tion which is close to where the al­leged al­ter­ca­tion oc­curred.

He re­mained un­der in­ter­ro­ga­tion at the Portof- Spain CID, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, up to late yes­ter­day, where he was ex­pect­ed to take part in an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade af­ter which charges may be laid. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent was launched af­ter a video record­ing of it went vi­ral on sev­er­al so­cial net­work­ing sites, in­clud­ing YouTube and Face­book.

The 57-sec­ond video, ti­tled "Po­lice Of­fi­cer Slaps Man in Face", al­leged­ly de­picts the of­fi­cer slap­ping the vic­tim acrosss his face af­ter a short con­ver­sa­tion. On Sep­tem­ber 3, the vic­tim ap­peared be­fore Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Ra­jen­dra Ram­bachan in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court charged with as­sault­ing the con­sta­ble in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties, re­sist­ing ar­rest, and us­ing in­sult­ing lan­guage with in­tent to in­cite per­sons to breach the peace. He has de­nied all the al­le­ga­tions.

Short­ly af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was start­ed by the unit, which is charged with prob­ing mis­con­duct by po­lice of­fi­cers, the con­sta­ble was said to have ap­plied for 28 days' sick leave.