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Monday, July 28, 2025

Chandler charged with 5 offences

by

Derek Achong
1374 days ago
20211022
Head of the TTPS Legal Unit Christian Chandler.

Head of the TTPS Legal Unit Christian Chandler.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Derek Achong

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Le­gal Unit head Chris­t­ian Chan­dler was last night slapped with five crim­i­nal charges aris­ing out of an in­ci­dent aboard a yacht on Au­gust 5.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that de­tec­tives of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) be­gan charg­ing Chan­dler, who was de­tained at the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion since Wednes­day evening, short­ly af­ter 8 pm.

Chan­dler was charged un­der sec­tion 3(1)(c) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers (No 2) Reg­u­la­tions of 2021, which cur­rent­ly makes it an of­fence to be found at any beach, sea, riv­er, stream, pond, spring or sim­i­lar body of wa­ter for recre­ation­al pur­pos­es.

The max­i­mum penal­ty for a breach of the reg­u­la­tions is a $250,000 fine and six months in prison.

He is al­so charged twice un­der sec­tion 206 of the De­fence Force Act with wil­ful­ly ob­struct­ing mem­bers of the T&T Coast Guard. That charge car­ries a $750 fine and up to three months in prison on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion.

Two more charges for pos­ses­sion of a firearm with­out a Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL) were al­so said to have be laid against him.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that once the charges were laid, Chan­dler’s lawyers, Wayne Sturge and Alex­ia Romero, were ex­pect­ed to at­tempt to get bail from a Jus­tice of the Peace so that he could be re­leased from de­ten­tion pend­ing a court hear­ing to an­swer the charges.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Chan­dler was among 14 peo­ple de­tained aboard a plea­sure craft off the coast of Ch­aguara­mas and es­cort­ed to Staubles Bay by Coast Guard of­fi­cers on Au­gust 5.

The T&T Coast Guard said it had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that a plea­sure craft al­leged­ly had more than five peo­ple aboard, con­trary to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

On Au­gust 16, Chan­dler pro­ceed­ed on leave pend­ing the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that three Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRPs) were al­so ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the case on Wednes­day and were ex­pect­ed to be charged for a sim­i­lar breach of the reg­u­la­tions and for ob­struct­ing the Coast Guard per­son­nel.

Guardian Me­dia was told that Chan­dler was in­ter­viewed by PSB de­tec­tives on Thurs­day and was placed on an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Chan­dler’s lawyers ini­tial­ly threat­ened le­gal ac­tion, as they ques­tioned why the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was not com­plet­ed be­fore their client’s ar­rest.

They al­so ac­cused in­ves­ti­ga­tors of deny­ing him food from his fam­i­ly and at­tempt­ing to have him im­pli­cate him­self while be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed.

In a re­sponse to Chan­dler’s lawyers, TTPS le­gal of­fi­cer Tson­da Gayle called up­on them to hold their hands on fil­ing a habeas cor­pus over their client’s de­ten­tion and sug­gest­ed that 48 hours de­ten­tion with­out charge was rea­son­able.


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