Fol­low­ing the ar­rest of Ca­reem James for al­leged­ly fail­ing to help po­lice of­fi­cers ap­pre­hend a sus­pect, one mem­ber of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty says po­lice may have act­ed il­le­gal­ly.

Speak­ing on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show, at­tor­ney-at-law Mar­tin George ar­gues that James may not have com­mit­ted an ar­restable of­fence.

“An ar­restable of­fence is one for which you could be in prison for a term of five years, at least,” George ex­plains.  “Un­der Sec­tion 60 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, the law speaks to the penal­ty for this [of­fence] is im­pris­on­ment for up to one year.  Then this does not come un­der the de­f­i­n­i­tion of an ar­restable of­fence.”

“Did they have a war­rant when they went back to ar­rest this man?  Be­cause if they did not have a war­rant, that cre­ates an­oth­er is­sue, be­cause ba­si­cal­ly the ar­rest may have been il­le­gal,” he as­serts.

Ge­oge be­lieves that James may have had good rea­son be­hind his de­ci­sion to not ren­der as­sis­tance, giv­en the cur­rent crime-rid­den cli­mate in the coun­try.

“In the cur­rent sce­nario of Trinidad and To­ba­go, one could ask one­self why some­one would will­ing­ly want to ex­pose them­selves to the dan­ger or risk of pos­si­bly al­so be­ing as­sault­ed by the per­son whom the po­lice is try­ing to ar­rest, or ex­pos­ing them­selves to the risk of reprisal,” Mar­tin George points out.  “The sit­u­a­tion in the so­ci­ety is such that one can un­der­stand the hes­i­ta­tion, the re­luc­tance and the fear that an or­di­nary cit­i­zen would have in terms of jump­ing in [to help].”

“The law ac­tu­al­ly gives you that es­cape clause, be­cause it says, ‘with­out rea­son­able cause’,” he notes, “once the per­son can in­di­cate, ‘I was afraid for my life ... I was afraid I would be as­sault­ed too … that the per­son might come back af­ter me’.”

Maxi-taxi dri­ver Ca­reem James was ar­rest­ed Tues­day, Ju­ly 16. 

He was charged ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 60 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, which says if a per­son fails to as­sist a po­lice of­fi­cer in mak­ing an ar­rest or who is be­ing as­sault­ed, they can be ar­rest­ed, charged, and face a fine or jail time up­on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion.

The act spec­i­fies that re­fusal or ne­glect to as­sist a po­lice of­fi­cer with­out rea­son­able cause can re­sult in a fine of $10,000 and im­pris­on­ment for one year.

The sec­tion was amend­ed in 2019 (Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions, Law En­force­ment Act 25 of 2019), in­creas­ing the penal­ties to $10,000 and three years of im­pris­on­ment.