An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The woman po­lice con­sta­ble (WPC) who re­port­ed be­ing robbed of more than $127,000 in cash on Oc­to­ber 1 was charged on Tues­day with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

Her son was joint­ly charged in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter.

WPC Chris­tine Viar­ru­el, 34, and her son Je­re­mi­ah ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter In­di­ra Chinebas in the Port-of-Spain High Court, where they were each grant­ed $300,000 bail.

As the charges were laid in­dictably by ASP Cadette, nei­ther was re­quired to en­ter a plea. The mat­ter was ad­journed to Jan­u­ary 25, 2027.

The charges stem from the dis­ap­pear­ance of more than $127,000 that the of­fi­cer claimed was stolen dur­ing an un­sched­uled trip to the Trea­sury on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

The WPC was ar­rest­ed on the same day she re­port­ed the rob­bery. Her son and three oth­er men from west Trinidad were de­tained sev­er­al days lat­er. Po­lice are still search­ing for the woman ini­tial­ly be­lieved to have stolen the cash.

The four male sus­pects were ar­rest­ed last week­end, af­ter of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly found less than $5,000 in cash and two gov­ern­ment vouch­ers val­ued at $55,050 and $72,600.
In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the vouch­ers were signed by the WPC and bore the of­fi­cial stamp of the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

The of­fi­cer, who was at­tached to the Of­fice of the In­spec­tor at the sta­tion, told in­ves­ti­ga­tors she had been robbed while walk­ing along In­de­pen­dence Square in Port-of-Spain. The miss­ing mon­ey was re­port­ed­ly made up of fees col­lect­ed over sev­er­al months for cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter, po­lice re­ports and firearm per­mit re­newals.

CCTV footage from around the sta­tion cap­tured the of­fi­cer leav­ing through a rear ex­it be­fore mak­ing her way to the Trea­sury.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tors, the clerk walked from East Dry Riv­er to the Trea­sury with­out an armed es­cort, con­trary to the usu­al pro­ce­dure for de­posit­ing cash.
Po­lice al­so al­leged that af­ter ar­riv­ing at the Trea­sury, she left with­out mak­ing the de­posit be­cause the line was too long.
She lat­er claimed that while near Cha­con Street on her way back to the sta­tion, a woman wear­ing a grey hood­ed sweat­shirt grabbed her bag and ran away.

A 20-sec­ond CCTV video from Cha­con Street, which was sub­se­quent­ly shared on so­cial me­dia, ap­peared to show the sus­pect walk­ing ahead of the of­fi­cer. At one point, the of­fi­cer ap­peared to ges­ture to­ward the sus­pect be­fore pur­su­ing him. The sus­pect was lat­er seen smil­ing be­fore run­ning off.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials main­tained no in­struc­tions were is­sued for the of­fi­cer to make the de­posit and that she act­ed on her own ini­tia­tive.

The in­ci­dent prompt­ed im­me­di­ate changes at the sta­tion. The sec­ond clerk who shared an of­fice with the WPC was trans­ferred on the same day, while the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in­tro­duced re­vised stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures gov­ern­ing the han­dling and de­posit­ing of cash at po­lice sta­tions.