JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

An Ari­ma busi­ness­man who was award­ed $90,000 af­ter a High Court judge found that he was as­sault­ed by a po­lice of­fi­cer three years ago is call­ing for bet­ter train­ing with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Daryl Daniel said the or­deal had left him with a deep mis­trust of po­lice of­fi­cers.

“I no longer have trust in the po­lice. I al­so own a busi­ness, and it’s very hard be­cause they al­ways come and ask for mon­ey. It’s dis­gust­ing. The cor­rup­tion with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice is very scary.

“I’m more con­cerned about the new peo­ple join­ing the ser­vice right now, be­cause the old­er of­fi­cers with the same bad habits are now teach­ing the younger ones. There may not be any re­al change un­less some­thing is done.”

Daniel, who was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney San­jiv Sumair, sued the State af­ter he was al­leged­ly choked by a po­lice of­fi­cer and lift­ed off the ground dur­ing an in­ci­dent stem­ming from what was con­sid­ered in­con­sid­er­ate park­ing at the Nor­ris De­onar­ine North­ern Whole­sale Mar­ket.

Re­call­ing the in­ci­dent, Daniel said that in Oc­to­ber 2023, he vis­it­ed the mar­ket to pur­chase goods and was di­rect­ed to park out­side the fa­cil­i­ty. Af­ter re­turn­ing to his ve­hi­cle, he said he was ap­proached by a po­lice of­fi­cer who be­gan hurl­ing in­sults at him. Ac­cord­ing to Daniel, the sit­u­a­tion quick­ly es­ca­lat­ed.

The 5-foot-5-inch man re­called: “He then choked me, put his hands around my neck, choked me and lift­ed me off the ground. He shook me for a lit­tle while and then dropped me.”

Daniel de­scribed the of­fi­cer as mus­cu­lar and wear­ing a mo­hawk hair­style.

Daniel said that at the time of the in­ci­dent, he had al­ready un­der­gone two spinal surg­eries, leav­ing him with rods, brack­ets and screws to sta­bilise his spine. He sus­tained the orig­i­nal in­jury af­ter falling ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 feet in­to a hole in the Unit­ed States in 2011.

Ac­cord­ing to Daniel, the al­ter­ca­tion ag­gra­vat­ed his pre-ex­ist­ing in­jury. He re­port­ed the mat­ter to both the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) and the Po­lice Com­plaints Di­vi­sion.

“The thing that made me pur­sue this mat­ter is the dis­re­spect shown by the po­lice. They are so ag­gres­sive that you can­not even ask them a ques­tion, even if you are sim­ply look­ing for di­rec­tions. They al­ways seem stressed, ag­gra­vat­ed and un­hap­py. I have nev­er seen so many un­hap­py po­lice of­fi­cers.”

The 48-year-old fa­ther of two, who lives in Flori­da, said the in­ci­dent had left a bit­ter taste in his mouth and per­ma­nent­ly af­fect­ed his per­cep­tion of law en­force­ment. He called on oth­ers who may have been wronged by the po­lice to fol­low his ex­am­ple and take their com­plaints to court, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that do­ing so can be a fi­nan­cial bur­den.