Two Beetham Gar­dens com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)’s an­ti-gang op­er­a­tions last week ap­peared in court yes­ter­day for sim­ple pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na.

An­cel “Chemist” Vil­lafana and Ken­neth “Span­ish” Ro­driguez ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Cher­ril-Anne An­toine in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court.

Vil­lafana plead­ed not guilty to the charge and was grant­ed bail while Ro­driguez plead­ed guilty and was fined $2,000.

While the TTPS had re­peat­ed­ly la­belled both men as “re­put­ed gang lead­ers,” with­out nam­ing them, nei­ther was charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act or have con­vic­tions for such of­fences.

In Vil­lafana’s case, the fa­ther of sev­en plead­ed not guilty to be­ing in pos­ses­sion of a small quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na that was al­leged­ly found when a house at Phase Five, Beetham Gar­dens, was raid­ed last Wednes­day. He was grant­ed $25,000 bail with a cash al­ter­na­tive of $10,000.

In ap­ply­ing for bail for 38-year-old Vil­lafana, his lawyer Ian Brooks called on po­lice to dis­close records re­lat­ed to the case. Brooks point­ed out that while the search war­rant stat­ed there were per­sons with Vil­lafana in the house when po­lice en­tered, the sum­ma­ry of ev­i­dence be­ing used in the case said he was alone.

“They (the po­lice) can build their case from there,” Brooks said.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, po­lice pros­e­cu­tors in­formed An­toine that po­lice had seized $63,800 and US$2,140 in cash dur­ing the raid and the mon­ey was hand­ed over to the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau.

Vil­lafana is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on March 18.

In pre­sent­ing a mit­i­ga­tion plea on Ro­driguez’s be­half, his at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge asked for le­nien­cy based on the fact his client im­me­di­ate­ly claimed own­er­ship of the six grammes of mar­i­jua­na af­ter it was found dur­ing a raid on his home last Fri­day. Po­lice of­fi­cers were in search of arms and am­mu­ni­tion but stum­bled up­on the drug, which was hid­den in short pants in a laun­dry bas­ket.

Sturge said Ro­driguez had been us­ing the drug for over 30 years and ad­mit­ted he had been charged for it on two oc­ca­sions over the past decade.

“There is lit­tle pur­pose in do­ing any­thing else but a fine,” Sturge said, as he al­so called up­on An­toine to con­sid­er that the Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly host­ing pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na.

He al­so re­vealed that Ro­driguez owned a con­tract­ing firm and a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny.

“The po­si­tion has not been moved as yet,” An­toine re­spond­ed be­fore is­su­ing the fine.

The duo was among over 30 peo­ple ar­rest­ed as part of the TTPS’s re­sponse to a re­cent up­surge in mur­ders and vi­o­lent crime in east Port-of-Spain. All ex­cept Ro­driguez and Vil­lafana were even­tu­al­ly freed with­out be­ing charged.

Mean­while, po­lice yes­ter­day con­duct­ed an­oth­er ex­er­cise at Beetham Gar­dens.

Two women were de­tained for ques­tion­ing dur­ing the ex­er­cise, which is part of their Red Alert op­er­a­tion.