SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

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.