A po­lice of­fi­cer, con­vict­ed of im­prop­er­ly re­mov­ing four fe­male Colom­bian de­tainees from a po­lice sta­tion, has been grant­ed bail pend­ing his ap­peal. 

Sgt Win­ston Pity was re­leased on $200,000 bail af­ter Ap­pel­late Judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh up­held his bail ap­pli­ca­tion on Thurs­day morn­ing. 

Last year, Pity was con­vict­ed of two counts of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas. 

He was lat­er sen­tenced to serve eight years and ten years, re­spec­tive­ly, for the of­fences. 

The of­fences were re­lat­ed to an al­leged in­ci­dent at the Point Fortin Po­lice Sta­tion on March 24, 2018. 

Pity was ac­cused of re­mov­ing the women, who were de­tained for im­mi­gra­tion of­fences, be­fore re­turn­ing them al­most two hours lat­er. 

His col­leagues, who tes­ti­fied against him, claimed that he said he had tak­en the women for piz­za when he re­turned with them to the sta­tion. 

In his de­fence, Pity de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he claimed that his col­leagues fab­ri­cat­ed the case as they “had an axe to grind”. 

One charge re­lat­ed to him un­law­ful­ly re­mov­ing the women, while the oth­er al­leged that he gave in­struc­tions to a ju­nior of­fi­cer to make false of­fi­cial en­tries to cov­er up his ac­tions. 

In con­sid­er­ing Pity’s bail ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh not­ed that he had raised sev­er­al grounds of ap­peal over the han­dling of his case. 

While he not­ed that the of­fi­cer had an ar­guable case over how Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas con­sid­ered in­con­sis­tent state­ments made by his (Pity) col­leagues, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh said the strongest ground was over the sever­i­ty of the sen­tences he re­ceived. 

Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh not­ed that Pity, who has spent al­most nine months in prison since his con­vic­tion, would have to wait be­tween two to three years be­fore his ap­peal is heard and de­ter­mined. 

“What this ef­fec­tive­ly means is that he re­mains in cus­tody with him hav­ing a good prospect of suc­cess in his ap­peal against sen­tenc­ing; it may well mean that he would ef­fec­tive­ly serve a large part if not the en­tire­ty of it, if suc­cess­ful,” he said. 

Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh al­so not­ed that there was no like­ly threat to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in grant­i­ng Pity bail. 

As part of the con­di­tions of his bail, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh or­dered Pity to sur­ren­der his pass­port. 

Pity was al­so or­dered to re­port to his near­est po­lice sta­tion twice week­ly un­til his ap­peal is de­ter­mined.