Shane Su­perville 

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has reaf­firmed its ‘one door’ pol­i­cy, which al­lows vic­tims to re­port crimes at any po­lice sta­tion, re­gard­less of where the in­ci­dent took place.

The re­minder fol­lows a re­port that two rob­bery vic­tims were turned away from the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day night and told to file their com­plaint at the St Joseph sta­tion in­stead. The dri­ver and pas­sen­ger had just been robbed at gun­point in St Au­gus­tine. While en route to St Joseph, they spot­ted the same ban­dits en­ter­ing an­oth­er maxi taxi and alert­ed po­lice, who lat­er ar­rest­ed the sus­pects and re­cov­ered a firearm, cash and stolen items.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, a TTPS spokesper­son con­firmed the pub­lic must not be turned away from any sta­tion and cit­ed De­part­men­tal Or­der 139, is­sued on Ju­ly 22, 2008. The or­der re­quires of­fi­cers to record the ar­rival of the per­son, take the re­port or state­ment, and en­sure the mat­ter is ad­dressed or re­ferred to the ap­pro­pri­ate sta­tion.

“If that was done in this case then it will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, and dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion can be tak­en against the of­fi­cer or of­fi­cers,” the spokesper­son said.