Ralph Ban­warie

Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) of­fi­cers yes­ter­day ar­rest­ed nine of­fi­cers from a spe­cialised unit with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s East­ern Di­vi­sion.

The ar­rests came af­ter the PSB com­plet­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions from a busi­ness own­er that he and oth­er busi­ness own­ers were be­ing ex­tort­ed by a group of of­fi­cers over some time.

The nine of­fi­cers were ini­tial­ly de­tained at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, where war­rants of ar­rest were read to them by PSB of­fi­cers.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands some of the of­fi­cers were in a meet­ing with a se­nior, which was dis­rupt­ed by the PSB of­fi­cers in or­der to make the ar­rests.

The in­ves­ti­gat­ing PSB of­fi­cers sub­se­quent­ly con­duct­ed search­es at the of­fi­cers’ homes and lock­ers.

The nine ar­rest­ed of­fi­cers were lat­er tak­en to the Port-of-Spain PSB, where they were ex­pect­ed to be charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

The T&TPS and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) be­gan par­al­lel probes af­ter claims of an ex­tor­tion rack­et in­volv­ing of­fi­cers were made in a so­cial me­dia post last month.

In a wide­ly shared on­line video, a per­son claim­ing to be a re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer and a rel­a­tive of a San­gre Grande busi­ness­man al­leged that po­lice of­fi­cers had been col­lect­ing “tax” from il­le­gal whe whe op­er­a­tions and roulette ma­chines in the East­ern Di­vi­sion, and al­so so­lic­it­ing bribes from his rel­a­tive to keep his busi­ness in op­er­a­tion.

The rel­a­tive claimed: “On a month­ly ba­sis, they will en­ter his busi­ness and if not giv­en the re­quest­ed amount, they will then ven­ture to take what­ev­er mon­ey is in the reg­is­ter or else­where.

“He has re­port­ed this mat­ter to the PSB (Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau) since last year, ac­com­pa­ny­ing it with this video and to date noth­ing has been done. He is al­so con­cerned that these very of­fi­cers may plant il­le­gal drugs on his premis­es and then hold him ac­count­able for it, or phys­i­cal­ly harm him. These said of­fi­cers were record­ed de­mand­ing a bribe from a Chi­nese busi­ness­man.”

The so­cial me­dia post in­clud­ed a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion where a caller, al­leged to have been an IATF of­fi­cer for­mer­ly sta­tioned in the East­ern Di­vi­sion, is heard ask­ing for $30,000 for “the boys.” A voice on the oth­er end of the line, re­port­ed to be a Chi­nese busi­ness­man, said the sum de­mand­ed was too high and in­stead sug­gests the usu­al month­ly $10,000 will be paid.

Re­ports al­lege that an in­spec­tor and three con­sta­bles were in­volved in the ex­tor­tion rack­et, which has been op­er­at­ing since the COVID-19 lock­downs.

Oth­er busi­ness­men made sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions af­ter the sto­ry was re­port­ed in main­stream me­dia.

ACP Chan­door, of PBS, led the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Con­tact­ed last night, PCA di­rec­tor David West con­firmed that nine of­fi­cers had been ar­rest­ed. How­ev­er, he said he could of­fer no more in­for­ma­tion since the case was on­go­ing

A se­nior of­fi­cer al­so told Guardian Me­dia last evening that all he could say is that en­quiries are con­tin­u­ing as of­fi­cers gath­er more in­for­ma­tion in the case.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that more ar­rests may be im­mi­nent.

The ar­rest­ed of­fi­cers are sched­uled to ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly be­fore a mag­is­trate on Mon­day.