Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

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​​Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has been or­dered by High Court judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo to de­cide by May 16 whether 33 firearm users’ li­cens­es will be grant­ed to their ap­pli­cants.

On Thurs­day, the High Court al­so ruled that the com­mis­sion­er must pay the ap­pli­cants the costs of the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tions, as well as the ap­pli­ca­tion for leave to file the pro­ceed­ings.

The court found that the com­mis­sion­er’s rea­sons for the de­lay in grant­i­ng the FULs to the claimants were un­rea­son­able.

The com­mis­sion­er’s le­gal team claimed that COVID-19, the amount of FUL ap­pli­ca­tions to be processed (around 50,000) and an au­dit in­to the firearm unit caused de­lays.

Hillary Ben­ny, a 30-year-old dou­bles ven­dor of Las Lo­mas, took the com­mis­sion­er to court along with 27 oth­er claimants, claim­ing that the CoP omit­ted, failed, ne­glect­ed and re­fused to de­cide on grant­i­ng FULs de­spite them sat­is­fy­ing all le­gal re­quire­ments.

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing no­ti­fi­ca­tions that their pro­vi­sion­al ap­pli­ca­tions were suc­cess­ful, they un­der­took the re­quired train­ing and were grant­ed cer­tifi­cates of com­pe­tence.

They then sub­mit­ted the cer­tifi­cates to the Firearm Sec­tion of the TTPS as re­quired.

The claimants have all been wait­ing be­tween 22 months to 35 months for the grant­i­ng of their FULs and sought re­lief, claim­ing that the com­mis­sion­er’s re­fusal to make a de­ci­sion was un­law­ful.

The po­lice com­mis­sion­er is the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the grant­i­ng of FULs and the reg­u­la­tion of the FUL sys­tem, ac­cord­ing to the Firearms Act.

Mean­while, in an­oth­er case, al­so on Thurs­day in the High Court, 27-year-old pi­lot Chris­t­ian Ma­haraj and 16 oth­ers were grant­ed leave to file for ju­di­cial re­view over the CoP’s al­leged breach/fail­ure to un­rea­son­ably de­lay in grant­i­ng them sim­i­lar li­cens­es.

Ma­haraj ap­plied for a FUL in June 2021. In his ap­pli­ca­tion, he said he be­came in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned for the safe­ty of his fam­i­ly due to the in­creas­ing crime rate.

He said mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing him­self, were al­so rob­bery vic­tims.

Like the 16 oth­er claimants that form part of his le­gal claim, he said he was grant­ed pro­vi­sion­al ap­proval and un­der­went the re­quired train­ing.

At­tor­neys Jagdeo Singh, Ka­ri­na Singh, Leon Kalicha­ran and Vashisht Seep­er­sad rep­re­sent­ed the claimants in both mat­ters.

Sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple have filed sim­i­lar le­gal claims in re­cent years.

In Ju­ly 2023, farmer Shi­va Boodram suc­ceed­ed in his law­suit over a two-and-a-half-year de­lay in de­cid­ing on his FUL ap­pli­ca­tion.

High Court judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad up­held Boodram’s ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in that case, in ear­ly 2018, Boodram ap­plied, claim­ing he need­ed a firearm to ex­ter­mi­nate pests at­tack­ing his live­stock.

The Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in­formed him that his ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied over his fail­ure to pro­vide ev­i­dence of the fi­nan­cial loss­es he al­leged­ly in­curred due to pests.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad stat­ed that the Firearms Act did not pre­scribe a time lim­it for de­cid­ing on FUL ap­pli­ca­tions but not­ed that the In­ter­pre­ta­tion Act re­quired that pub­lic au­thor­i­ties de­cide on ap­pli­ca­tions be­fore them in a rea­son­able time.

He stat­ed that the Po­lice Ser­vice failed to pro­vide ev­i­dence of what caused the de­lay in pro­cess­ing Boodram’s ap­pli­ca­tion.