Jensen La Vende

Three po­lice of­fi­cers last at­tached to the Rapid Re­sponse Unit will ap­pear be­fore Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate to­day charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, af­ter they were ar­rest­ed for al­leged­ly ac­cept­ing a to­tal of $6,500 to forego pros­e­cu­tion against a Diego Mar­tin man.

The men, An­der­son Richards, 36, Nicholas Hen­ry, 34 and Ronald Mod­este, 26, were ar­rest­ed be­tween last Wednes­day night and Thurs­day morn­ing fol­low­ing a sting op­er­a­tion by the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau.

The of­fi­cers were last work­ing out of the West­ern Di­vi­sion and are all Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers. The men, who are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Fa­reed Ali, were grant­ed $80,000 sta­tion bail.

It is al­leged that the men, with be­tween six to 11 years ex­pe­ri­ence as of­fi­cers col­lec­tive­ly, mis­be­haved in pub­lic of­fice on No­vem­ber 27 and 30 by cor­rupt­ly so­lic­it­ing from a mem­ber of the pub­lic, $4,500 and $2,000, as an in­duce­ment to not in­ves­ti­gate a sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal of­fence of hu­man traf­fick­ing.

The of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions gave the go ahead to charge the men on Sat­ur­day. The three will be among five of­fi­cers who have ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate with­in a week. Last Mon­day, Supt Wayne Thongs and SRP Con­sta­ble Day­na Spencer ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Nanette Forde-John, charged with en­gag­ing in a se­ries of acts tend­ing to per­vert the course of pub­lic jus­tice and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

It is al­leged that while at­tached to the RRU, Spencer, 40, pre­sent­ed du­ty slips to Thongs, 55, in Feb­ru­ary 2015 for work she re­port­ed­ly had not done and for which he is al­leged to have au­tho­rised for pay­ment. The duo will reap­pear in court on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2017. Then last Thurs­day, SRP Shireen Khan ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate and was grant­ed $15,000 bail to re-ap­pear in court on De­cem­ber 8, af­ter she was ar­rest­ed on an out­stand­ing war­rant for pros­ti­tu­tion.

The war­rant was is­sued in 1996 for the al­leged of­fence which would have hap­pened the pre­vi­ous year.