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Sunday, July 27, 2025

Injustice!

Cops failed to attend court for 1800 cases in 2019

Griffith working on getting officers to abide to duty

by

Sharlene Rampersad
1616 days ago
20210222
Commissioner of Police, Gary Griffith.

Commissioner of Police, Gary Griffith.

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

 

There has been a mas­sive pub­lic out­cry over the past sev­er­al weeks about the fail­ure of po­lice of­fi­cers to at­tend court hear­ings leav­ing mag­is­trates with no choice but to dis­miss mat­ters that have been drag­ging on for years.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the Court and Process Branch of the Po­lice Ser­vice, there were 1800 cas­es in 2019 alone where po­lice of­fi­cers failed to show up for court.

In this in­stal­ment of In­jus­tice: A Bro­ken Sys­tem, Guardian Me­dia spoke with two po­lice of­fi­cers who go through the process of charg­ing sus­pects and prepar­ing for court ap­pear­ances. Both of­fi­cers will be kept anony­mous.

One ex­plained that when a po­lice of­fi­cer charges a civil­ian and takes them be­fore the court, the of­fi­cer be­comes the “po­lice com­plainant.” They are now re­spon­si­ble for com­pil­ing a file with all of their ev­i­dence to hand over to pros­e­cu­tors. This file, which in­cludes wit­ness state­ments, any ev­i­dence they have gath­ered, the state­ment of the ac­cused per­son, the vic­tim’s state­ment and the com­plainant’s state­ment, forms a key part of the state’s case against any ac­cused per­son.

In its ab­sence, cas­es will col­lapse.

The of­fi­cer said while he was aware of the im­por­tance of his in­put in the jus­tice sys­tem, the process was too of­ten long and te­dious.

“From a con­sta­ble, the file goes to a cor­po­ral, from the cor­po­ral to a sergeant, from a sergeant to an in­spec­tor, the in­spec­tor to your As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent then back to the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent be­fore it gets to Court and Process where the pros­e­cu­tor will then get a copy of the file. But while it is mov­ing through all of these peo­ple, every­one has their two cents to add in and they al­ways want to send it back so it can be amend­ed to try to make the case the stronger,” he said.

The of­fi­cer said this process usu­al­ly takes months and while it is on­go­ing, the court mat­ter is be­ing re­called every 28 days if the ac­cused is in the Re­mand Yard or every two months if the ac­cused is grant­ed bail.

He said even at­tend­ing court is some­times too much for the of­fi­cers af­ter they have spent the night on du­ty.

“Imag­ine you work all night and you have to go to court in the morn­ing and for what­ev­er time that mat­ter will be called, when you go to court, lawyers who are present will ask for their mat­ters to be called first—if the per­son you charge does not have a lawyer, you have to wait un­til the mag­is­trate is ready to call that mat­ter be­cause he/she will deal with all the lawyers’ mat­ters first and then move on,” he said.

He said the length of time it takes to get case files ready al­so takes a toll on wit­ness­es, who get “fed up” of wait­ing and refuse to tes­ti­fy. He said at­tor­neys are aware of the chal­lenges fac­ing the of­fi­cers and use every op­por­tu­ni­ty to call for their client’s charges to be dis­missed.

“When they see the wit­ness­es don’t come to court, the mag­is­trate will make note of all of this and the pros­e­cu­tion is the one look­ing bad all this time. And the de­fence beat­ing their chest and say­ing they were ready and the pros­e­cu­tion was not… the de­fence will al­ways try to get mat­ters dis­missed.”

His col­league sug­gest­ed a so­lu­tion to the long wait for files to be ap­proved be­fore they can be hand­ed over to pros­e­cu­tors. He said, if files move from the com­plainant straight to the pros­e­cu­tor, the time to get it pre­pared would be vast­ly de­creased.

“I be­lieve the jus­tice sys­tem is too slow but the po­lice can have a hand in fix­ing that, be­cause the same way the file goes through all of these hands to get to the pros­e­cu­tor, let the com­plainant li­aise di­rect­ly with the pros­e­cu­tor be­cause they would be fa­mil­iar with the case, they would han­dling it di­rect­ly in court and they have ex­pe­ri­ence in court- more so than an or­di­nary cor­po­ral or sergeant who has no ex­pe­ri­ence in the court it­self.”

But in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith dis­missed this sug­ges­tion.

Grif­fith said he will not com­ment on the in­ner work­ings of the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions but he knows the of­fice was al­ready over­bur­dened.

“That is a cop-out, where in­stead of do­ing your job, you can’t be sim­ply try­ing to run to the DPP, and bur­den them with enor­mous work when we are sup­posed to be do­ing our own prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I will not ac­cept that as an ex­cuse, by try­ing to run to the DPP to try to do our own work,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith said he has been work­ing on get­ting of­fi­cers to abide by their du­ties since he as­sumed of­fice.

“It made ab­solute­ly no sense to have such a sit­u­a­tion be­cause it meant that all of the work done by the po­lice of­fi­cers to in­ves­ti­gate, ar­rest and charge would be of no val­ue and ob­vi­ous­ly the rea­son for us do­ing all that would be for per­sons to be in­car­cer­at­ed and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed.”

He said in 2020, there was an 80 per cent over­all im­prove­ment in the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers who showed up to court.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the Court and Process Branch of the TTPS, there were 1800 cas­es in 2019 where po­lice of­fi­cers failed to show up to court. There were on­ly 340 cas­es in 2020.

“Last year, in a few of the di­vi­sions, there was a 90 to 95 per cent re­duc­tion in non-ap­pear­ance, in­clu­sive of Port- of- Spain and the North East­ern Di­vi­sions. Over­all, it was an 80 per cent re­duc­tion,” Grif­fith said.

He said the of­fi­cers are be­ing made to ac­count for their ab­sen­teeism and dis­ci­plined if their ex­cus­es are not valid.

“The rea­son why we were able to min­imise to such a high num­ber is that we were able to put sys­tems in place so that every sin­gle time a po­lice of­fi­cer was ab­sent and a case dis­missed for non-ap­pear­ance, the of­fi­cer had to ac­count for his non-ap­pear­ance.”

Grif­fith said the Po­lice Ser­vice has al­so start­ed ap­point­ing sub­sti­tute com­plainants to re­place the pri­ma­ry com­plainants if they are un­able to at­tend court, so the mat­ter can con­tin­ue with­out de­lay.


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