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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Judge: No law barring

public from recording cops

by

309 days ago
20240904
Businessmen Eisa Ghany, left, and Anzar Mohammed, and their lawyers Richard Jaggasar and Lutchmi Sookram leave the Waterfront Judicial Centre in Port-of-Spain after being awarded compensation for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment yesterday.

Businessmen Eisa Ghany, left, and Anzar Mohammed, and their lawyers Richard Jaggasar and Lutchmi Sookram leave the Waterfront Judicial Centre in Port-of-Spain after being awarded compensation for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment yesterday.

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has sought to re­mind po­lice of­fi­cers that there is no pro­hi­bi­tion against mem­bers of the pub­lic record­ing them while they are per­form­ing their du­ties in a pub­lic place. 

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad gave the ad­vice as he award­ed over $90,000 in com­pen­sa­tion each to two busi­ness­men, who were ar­rest­ed for record­ing of­fi­cers while they were de­tain­ing so­cial ac­tivist In­shan Ish­mael in 2017.

He or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for An­zar Mo­hammed and Eisa Ghany as he up­held their wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment case against the State af­ter a brief tri­al, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: “There is ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong with video tap­ing events that take place in a pub­lic fo­rum es­pe­cial­ly in­volv­ing the po­lice.”

He sug­gest­ed that such ac­tiv­i­ty may al­so be ben­e­fi­cial to po­lice of­fi­cers. 

“It pro­tects them as well from al­le­ga­tions of be­hav­iour they may not have en­gaged in. They can not feel threat­ened,” he said. 

The out­come of the case means that the State has had to pay over $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for Ish­mael’s ar­rest as he (Ish­mael) was pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed over $310,000 in com­pen­sa­tion by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad for wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment, and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. 

The duo was ar­rest­ed and charged with ob­struct­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer in Oc­to­ber 2017, when Ish­mael was de­tained by po­lice of­fi­cers at his Barakah Grounds com­plex in En­deav­our, Ch­agua­nas. 

Ish­mael’s ar­rest was over an in­ci­dent, which oc­curred at a sports and fam­i­ly day in Char­lieville, six months ear­li­er. 

Ish­mael was charged with pos­ses­sion of a firearm to en­dan­ger life, pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion to en­dan­ger life and as­sault­ing a man at the fam­i­ly day, who claimed that Ish­mael threat­ened him with a firearm. 

The duo, who were Ish­mael’s ten­ants, were charged with ob­struct­ing the of­fi­cers af­ter be­ing de­tained for 10 hours. 

Ish­mael made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore a mag­is­trate up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion and dis­missed the charges. 

Three months af­ter Jus­tice Seep­er­sad up­held Ish­mael’s civ­il law­suit over his ar­rest in 2022, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue charges against two busi­ness­men, who were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Richard Jag­gasar. 

In up­hold­ing the duo’s case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that they were forth­right and hon­est while giv­ing ev­i­dence. 

“There was no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the claimants were be­ing dis­re­spect­ful or used deroga­to­ry lan­guage,” he said. 

Seep­er­sad al­so ruled that the claims by the of­fi­cer who ar­rest­ed them, then-As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent (ASP) and cur­rent Se­nior Supt Richard Smith, were not plau­si­ble based on the ev­i­dence. 

“It is un­like­ly and im­prob­a­ble that these two claimants came up to Mr Smith. If they were record­ing it is un­like­ly that they were 18 to 20 inch­es from him,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said. 

Not­ing that Smith was ac­com­pa­nied by a large group of col­leagues in­clud­ing some who were heav­i­ly armed, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: “It was high­ly un­like­ly that they would have the temer­i­ty to go so close to the ve­hi­cle.” 

While he ac­cept­ed that the job of a po­lice of­fi­cer is dif­fi­cult, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that they (of­fi­cers) had a du­ty to act with rea­son and in a mea­sured man­ner. 

“They have sig­nif­i­cant pow­ers but these must be cau­tious­ly ex­er­cised and done in a man­ner that is al­ways fair and forth­right,” he said. 

He added that abuse of pow­er by of­fi­cers would not as­sist them in the fight against crime.

“If the pub­lic can­not re­spect po­lice of­fi­cers the lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion the po­lice need to tack­le the on­slaught of crim­i­nal­i­ty will not be forth­com­ing,” he said. 

In up­hold­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered $55,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $15,000 in ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages. 

He al­so or­dered $10,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages to high­light his ab­hor­rence of the con­duct of the of­fi­cers. 

He re­it­er­at­ed calls for Par­lia­ment to con­sid­er pass­ing leg­is­la­tion to make er­rant of­fi­cers pay such dam­ages for their un­law­ful con­duct as op­posed to it be­ing paid by the State. 

“Un­til peo­ple are af­fect­ed in their pock­ets, be­hav­iour pat­terns would not change,” he said. 

The State was al­so or­dered to pay $10,000 to each of the men, which rep­re­sents their le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the charge be­fore it was dis­con­tin­ued. It was al­so or­dered to pay their le­gal costs for the civ­il law­suit. 

Mo­hammed was seek­ing ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion as he claimed that he had an eye con­di­tion, which was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the stress from his ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad de­clined to grant such as he not­ed that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence link­ing his con­di­tion to the in­ci­dent. 

Mo­hammed and Ghany were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by An­dre Cole and Lutch­mi Sookram. The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Can­dice Alexan­der and Ka­dine Matthew.


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