For­mer head of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, re­tired Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent John­ny Abra­ham, says no re­ports of do­mes­tic abuse in­volv­ing Rachael Sukhdeo were made to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion while he was in charge be­tween 2014 and 2015.

Speak­ing to the GML En­ter­prise Desk Abra­ham said: "She knew me per­son­al­ly and she nev­er brought any in­ci­dent of abuse to my at­ten­tion. I do not know if she made re­ports pri­or to my be­ing in charge but no re­port came to me."

Abra­ham, who re­tired from the ser­vice late last year, added: "if any re­port was made I would have dealt with it."

The woman had re­port­ed that she had made sev­er­al re­ports at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion but they were not act­ed up­on.

He said Rachael must know the of­fi­cer whom she spoke with and when she spoke with them whether it was on the phone or whether she came to the front desk and the in­for­ma­tion was not passed to him but he in­sist­ed "she nev­er spoke to me." He said he al­so found it "dis­taste­ful" a Face­book post from an ac­count in the name of Rachael Sukhdeo which de­scribed Ch­agua­nas po­lice of­fi­cers as "the most cor­rupt" and said she felt like the of­fend­er rather than the vic­tim.

Abra­ham said in do­mes­tic abuse mat­ters in­ter­ro­gat­ing of­fi­cers ask a lot of ques­tions and it could be that giv­en the line of ques­tion­ing she may have felt "pres­sured."

How­ev­er, he said the in­ten­tion was nev­er to make the vic­tim feel like an of­fend­er, "it is just do­ing the job to get the facts."

There is al­so a post on the woman's Face­book page that a se­nior of­fi­cer threat­ened her.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Ever­ald Snag­gs de­scribed the events which un­fold­ed on Tues­day out­side the home of car deal­er Sheron Sukhdeo at Or­chard Gar­dens, Ch­agua­nas, as an "un­for­tu­nate de­vel­op­ment that took place and it's in the me­dia open to pub­lic tri­al. It is so un­for­tu­nate."

Crime Watch host Ian Al­leyne was ar­rest­ed and charged with three of­fences by TV6's Be­yond the Tape host In­sp Roger Alexan­der which was cap­tured by rolling tele­vi­sion cam­eras. Alexan­der said Al­leyne re­fused to leave an ac­tive crime scene when in­struct­ed.

Snag­gs said those were two high-pro­file peo­ple who "deal with pub­lic is­sues." He did not want to delve in­to the video, say­ing there may be more to it than met the eye. "It's a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for all of us," he added.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said: "Po­lice do have the au­thor­i­ty to re­move some­one from the com­pound. There is no need for yel­low tape as is be­ing said."

He said the cor­rect pro­ce­dure in those types of cir­cum­stances was "first for the of­fi­cer to use ver­bal per­sua­sion. If that does not work then he said the of­fi­cer can give a gen­tle push to move the per­son and if the per­son is re­sist­ing then a more force­ful mea­sure can be used, in­clud­ing hand­cuffs."

How­ev­er, he said it would be up to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty to re­view the video ma­te­r­i­al and de­ter­mine whether "ex­ces­sive force" was used.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty has said it could not in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter be­cause Sec­tion 37 of the PCA Act pro­hibits the au­thor­i­ty from con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion once crim­i­nal charges have been laid.

The Act says: "Where the sub­ject mat­ter of a com­plaint or an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is the sub­ject of ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings, the au­thor­i­ty shall not com­mence or con­tin­ue an in­ves­ti­ga­tion pend­ing the out­come of those pro­ceed­ings.