Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The 31-year-old man who was ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice found army and po­lice cloth­ing and items in his home in Guayagua­yare has been charged.

Po­lice con­firmed yes­ter­day that Curlan Matthews was charged with pos­ses­sion of cam­ou­flage cloth­ing and plead­ed guilty be­fore Ma­yaro Mag­is­trate Nizam Khan. He was placed on a two-year bond to keep the peace and be on good be­hav­iour.

He, how­ev­er, was not charged with hav­ing cloth­ing and items be­long­ing to the TTPS, in­clud­ing a po­lice con­sta­ble’s badge and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card. A source told Guardian Me­dia that the man and the con­sta­ble were ac­quain­tances.

Po­lice in­quiries re­vealed that the con­sta­ble has been on con­tin­u­ous sick leave for over a year. The items were found af­ter of­fi­cers of the Ma­yaro CID and TTPS Ca­nine Unit ex­e­cut­ed a High Court search war­rant at the man’s La Sa­vanne Cir­cu­lar home around 3:45 am dur­ing an an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion.

The items were dis­cov­ered un­der a mat­tress. They in­clud­ed a blue T-shirt with a po­lice em­blem, black car­go pants, a blue op­er­a­tional jack­et with two TTPS shoul­der patch­es and two front po­lice patch­es, a black cap marked po­lice, a ski mask, two long cam­ou­flage trousers, and an army-type pat­terned T-shirt.

In light of sev­er­al se­ri­ous crimes com­mit­ted by as­sailants dressed in po­lice at­tire, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher last week is­sued an ad­vi­so­ry to all po­lice of­fi­cers to hand in their tac­ti­cal cloth­ing and re­vert to the tra­di­tion­al grey shirt and blue pants.