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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

ACP Simon dismisses ‘lost file’ claim in DCP Martin probe

by

Shane Superville
7 days ago
20250701
ACP Curt Simon

ACP Curt Simon

NICOLE DRAYTON

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

ACP Curt Si­mon has de­nied me­dia re­ports that the file on the probe in­to DCP Suzette Mar­tin, in the mat­ter in­volv­ing the ar­rest of busi­ness­man Brent Thomas, has gone miss­ing.

“No file in this in­ves­ti­ga­tion or any­thing touch­ing this in­ves­ti­ga­tion is miss­ing. I saw some­thing where some­body said that the DCP I and I (In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions) re­quest­ed that I pro­duce a file to her. There has not been any such re­quest com­ing my way,” Si­mon said in re­la­tion to a sto­ry pub­lished in yes­ter­day’s News­day.

He re­fused fur­ther com­ment, say­ing he was care­ful to ob­serve the rules re­gard­ing mat­ters con­sid­ered sub ju­dice (a mat­ter pro­hib­it­ed from pub­lic dis­cus­sion due to in­ves­ti­ga­tion or ju­di­cial con­sid­er­a­tion).

At­tempts to con­tact Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro via phone and What­sApp were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, sources dis­closed that Mar­tin re­mained on ac­tive du­ty up to yes­ter­day.

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) has, so far, not re­spond­ed to queries about why Mar­tin re­mains on du­ty de­spite the probe.

When asked about this last week, Gue­var­ro said ques­tions over whether Mar­tin would be placed on leave should be di­rect­ed to the PolSC, not­ing this was the on­ly body au­tho­rised to sus­pend po­lice of­fi­cers.

How­ev­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figuera says the com­mis­sion should at least ad­dress the mat­ter pub­licly to quell con­cerns over trans­paren­cy and fair­ness in their treat­ment of of­fi­cers.

Re­fer­ring to the ar­rest of for­mer com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher ear­li­er this year, Figuera said the dif­fer­ence was glar­ing, as Hare­wood-Christo­pher was is­sued her sus­pen­sion let­ter by the PolSC while still in po­lice cus­tody on Jan­u­ary 31.

He said the com­mis­sion should at least ad­dress the mat­ter to pre­vent any con­cerns of favouritism with­in the TTPS.

“The de­lay on the part of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has to be ad­dressed, giv­en the ra­pid­i­ty in which the same com­mis­sion moved to sus­pend for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and that is what I am look­ing at in this af­fair. What I would re­al­ly like to know is if there are dif­fer­ent rules for dif­fer­ent per­sons, be­cause they act­ed swift­ly and ex­pe­di­tious­ly with for­mer com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher,” he said.

“This is send­ing a mes­sage to the pub­lic that does not bode well to the in­tegri­ty of the TTPS in the eyes of the pub­lic. It again rais­es the ques­tion in the eyes of the pub­lic of if there are sa­cred cows in the po­lice ser­vice, whilst your for­mer (Po­lice) com­mis­sion­er was cer­tain­ly not a sa­cred cow.”

Last week, for­mer PolSC chair Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran al­so urged the cur­rent com­mis­sion to an­nounce whether sus­pen­sion was at least be­ing con­sid­ered for Mar­tin.

Figuera agreed that while the mat­ter was a sen­si­tive is­sue, the PolSC al­so had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of any en­quiry, es­pe­cial­ly one with such high pub­lic in­ter­est.

“The longer they re­main silent, they are erod­ing any pub­lic faith in your op­er­a­tional in­tegri­ty, be­cause re­mem­ber they set a stan­dard with for­mer com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, which it ap­pears they are ap­ply­ing se­lec­tive­ly, and that is the im­pres­sion they are gen­er­at­ing in pub­lic.”


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