Jensen La Vende

Sec­re­tary of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, In­sp Michael Seales, was grant­ed $75,000 bail at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court yes­ter­day af­ter­noon af­ter he ap­peared charged with mak­ing a sedi­tious state­ment on June 24 last year.

Seales, who is cur­rent­ly con­test­ing the pres­i­den­cy in the body's up­com­ing elec­tion, ap­peared be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar and was rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der, SC, and Owen Hinds.

El­der in­formed the court Seales was a serv­ing mem­ber of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and as such had an un­blem­ished record. She added that dur­ing his 28-year ca­reer he had re­ceived many com­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing from the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice.

Seales was ar­rest­ed on a war­rant at the as­so­ci­a­tion's Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion of­fice. The ar­rest war­rant car­ried with it $75,000 bail with sure­ty.

His wife, Nicole Hospedales, was al­lowed to be used as his sure­ty af­ter the Chief Mag­is­trate in­formed her of the se­ri­ous­ness of her vow to en­sure both she and Seales at­tend court on every oc­ca­sion the mat­ter was called. Ay­ers-Cae­sar then ad­journed the mat­ter to Ju­ly 20.

Seales was sup­port­ed in court by Hospedales and as­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers, In­sp Anand Rame­sar and In­sp Ian Car­ty.He has been on sus­pen­sion since June last year. It would have ex­pired to­mor­row and elec­tions three days lat­er.

It is al­leged that Seales made the sedi­tious state­ment on June 24 last year dur­ing a live in­ter­view on TV6 Morn­ing Edi­tion.He had claimed there was then an al­leged plot by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment to frus­trate the Po­lice Ser­vice to re­act in such a way that there would be a need for a state of emer­gency, there­by stalling the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Seales made the com­ment dur­ing the height­ened wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and was sus­pend­ed the fol­low­ing day by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams.In a re­lease then, Williams said he made the de­ci­sion "as a re­sult of an al­le­ga­tion of se­ri­ous mis­con­duct."

Speak­ing out­side the cour­t­house yes­ter­day, in­cum­bent pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Rame­sar, said he stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with his sec­re­tary.

"Hav­ing spo­ken to the mem­ber­ship, the view is that Michael is go­ing to be the next pres­i­dent of the Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion," Rame­sar said.

"He has the back­ing of the po­lice and let the au­thor­i­ties know, we will be sup­port­ing him all the way and we have full faith in the le­gal sys­tem and that he will be ex­on­er­at­ed from these al­le­ga­tions.

"This is just a small hic­cup in the path and we are still of full faith that it will change noth­ing for next week's elec­tions," he added.