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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Cop charges, puts mom in labour off PBR: Husband to contest ticket

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20161005

A week af­ter a very preg­nant Ar­lene La­ban-Am­mon and her hus­band were stopped, tick­et­ed and or­dered off the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route while she was in labour, she is now call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties for clear­er guide­lines on the use of the PBR.

Not­ing that an emer­gency C-sec­tion saved her child's life af­ter they got to the hos­pi­tal two hours af­ter be­ing put off the PBR, La­ban-Am­mon is now call­ing for a clear pol­i­cy on the use of the PBR.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, La­ban-Am­mon, 36, said around 6 am last Mon­day she and her hus­band, Don­ny Am­mon, left their Ari­ma home to go to the St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal as she was hav­ing con­trac­tions.

On their way to the hos­pi­tal, La­ban-Am­mon said she begged Don­ny to get there quick­ly as her con­trac­tions be­came in­creas­ing­ly painful.

"I start­ed to get more and more pain and the traf­fic was not mov­ing at all.

"I re­mem­bered see­ing In­spec­tor (Roger) Alexan­der say­ing you can use the PBR in the case of an emer­gency so I asked Don­ny to go on­to the bus route," she said.

She said her hus­band drove on­to the bus route where they in­tend­ed to flag down any po­lice of­fi­cer they might seen for an es­cort to the hos­pi­tal. How­ev­er, af­ter sev­er­al min­utes, the cou­ple saw a po­lice of­fi­cer who or­dered them to pull over.

"They were pulling aside all ve­hi­cles with­out pass­es and when the of­fi­cer came up to the car, he asked Don­ny what he was do­ing on the bus route.

"Don­ny told him I was in labour and we were try­ing to get to the hos­pi­tal and he asked why we didn't call an am­bu­lance. Don­ny then told him we have a car, so we drove in­stead.

"He said, 'Yuh play­ing brave?' and or­dered a younger fe­male of­fi­cer to write us a tick­et. I could see she didn't want to do it be­cause she was watch­ing us the whole time but she wrote it any­way."

The Am­mons were giv­en a tick­et for $2,000 and or­dered to turn around and leave the PBR. They sub­se­quent­ly spent two ad­di­tion­al hours in traf­fic be­fore get­ting to the hos­pi­tal, where Dr Sherene Kalloo quick­ly be­gan as­sess­ing the ba­by's con­di­tion.

"The scans showed the ba­by's heart­beat was er­rat­i­cal­ly high and it was not reg­u­lat­ing. We were told we had to do an emer­gency C-sec­tion or risk hav­ing a still­born," La­ban-Am­mon said.

Thank­ful­ly, her son Ar­mani was even­tu­al­ly de­liv­ered healthy but the moth­er of two said her hus­band now in­tend­ed to con­test the tick­et in court.

"Why didn't the po­lice have some com­pas­sion or sym­pa­thy? My ba­by could have died be­cause of the stress and the long wait to get to the hos­pi­tal and the of­fi­cer treat­ed us so bad­ly," she added.She said she and her hus­band had not planned a C-sec­tion.

"We were not cater­ing for that cost. We had saved up mon­ey to have a nat­ur­al birth but this pro­ce­dure is like three times the cost that we now have to come up with," she said.

She is al­so adamant that the C-sec­tion could have been avoid­ed if the of­fi­cer had al­lowed them to use the PBR.

"If he had a lit­tle bit of un­der­stand­ing, me and my ba­by would not have had to go through all of this. I had a healthy preg­nan­cy with no com­pli­ca­tions at that point," she said.

Cop can use dis­cre­tion

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to queries yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said a po­lice of­fi­cer in uni­form did have the dis­cre­tion to al­low a per­son who did not have a PBR pass to use it in the case of an emer­gency.

How­ev­er, Hinds said it was still up to the of­fi­cer at that time to make that de­ci­sion.He added: "The pol­i­cy is that on­ly au­tho­rised ve­hi­cles, large­ly those used for pub­lic trans­port and a few oth­ers, are per­mit­ted to use the bus route.

"That per­mis­sion is con­veyed with the al­lo­ca­tion of a PBR pass. In the ab­sence of that pass, no one is al­lowed to use the bus route, re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances.

"But a po­lice of­fi­cer in uni­form act­ing un­der the rule of gen­er­al law has the law­ful au­thor­i­ty to di­rect a mo­torist to use any road­way in any man­ner at any time.

"So if a po­lice of­fi­cer in­structs you to dri­ve up a one-way street, you are du­ty-bound to com­ply. And there­fore if a po­lice of­fi­cer au­tho­ris­es you to use the PBR, then the user has rea­son­able ex­cuse for us­ing it."

While he said he could not com­ment on the specifics of this case, Hinds said the of­fi­cer may not have been sat­is­fied that the case was a gen­uine emer­gency.

"It may very well be that the po­lice of­fi­cer was not so sat­is­fied that her con­di­tion was gen­uine. It seems from the re­ports so far that the of­fi­cer was not per­suad­ed that her re­port was valid," he said.

He said while he did not have the com­pe­ten­cy to judge this mat­ter, he felt it was nec­es­sary to bring clar­i­ty to the is­sue as it could arise again in oth­er sit­u­a­tions.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer of the TTPS, Michael Pierre, con­firmed that in cir­cum­stances such as last Mon­day's, po­lice could use their dis­cre­tion to al­low peo­ple to dri­ve on the PBR.

But he said hav­ing heard on­ly one side of the sto­ry, he could not say whether the of­fi­cer should have dealt with the sit­u­a­tion dif­fer­ent­ly.


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