Jensen La Vende

Four po­lice­men at­tached to the North­ern Di­vi­sion hid from me­dia cam­eras af­ter they ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.Af­ter the mat­ter end­ed, Sgt Lester Gar­cia, Cpl Shel­don Pe­ter­son and con­sta­bles Dex­ter Ed­wards and Ro­nan New­ton avoid­ed the me­dia and even­tu­al­ly used the court's pri­vate en­trances to es­cape be­ing pho­tographed.

Ear­li­er, they ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles on three charges, each in con­nec­tion with the theft of $525,000 from busi­nes­sown­ers Dan­ny and Yvonne Owu's Bon Air Gar­dens, Arou­ca, apart­ment on Sep­tem­ber 17.Gar­cia, Ed­wards and New­ton are at­tached to the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion while Pe­ter­son is at­tached to the Mal­abar sta­tion.

The court heard that three of them al­leged­ly ran­sacked the apart­ment while the fourth wait­ed in an SUV out­side. The cou­ple, who were not at home at the time, were con­tact­ed by a fel­low res­i­dent at the build­ing, af­ter the men were seen leav­ing with loaded duf­fle bags. A re­port was then made to po­lice, who traced the SUV's li­cence plate to the Arou­ca sta­tion.The miss­ing mon­ey, which the me­dia was told ini­tial­ly tal­lied at $625,000, is yet to be re­cov­ered.

The men, who were each grant­ed $800,000 sta­tion bail, were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Sophia Chote SC and Trevor Clarke.When they ap­peared be­fore the mag­is­trate, court pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Cal­lis­ter Charles told her he was not ob­ject­ing to them con­tin­u­ing on sta­tion bail as they were mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice and had no pre­vi­ous or pend­ing mat­ters.He added that the case file was sent to the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for the ap­point­ment of a State at­tor­ney.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 8 and trans­fered to the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates Court.