DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has re­fused to lift an in­junc­tion block­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher from con­tin­u­ing the pro­mo­tion as­sess­ment process for the rank of As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice (ASP).

Last Fri­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed the in­junc­tion to In­spec­tor Mark Her­nan­dez af­ter he filed a law­suit al­leg­ing that the on­go­ing pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise breached the Po­lice Ser­vice Act and Reg­u­la­tions.

When Her­nan­dez’s case came up for a vir­tu­al hear­ing, yes­ter­day morn­ing, at­tor­ney Coreen Find­ley, who led the le­gal team for Hare­wood-Christo­pher and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­quest­ed that the in­junc­tion be dis­charged.

She claimed that Her­nan­dez’s law­suit was not in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est.

“This mat­ter af­fects a lot of oth­er peo­ple and the in­tegri­ty of the process,” she said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad dis­agreed as he not­ed that Her­nan­dez had raised se­ri­ous and per­ti­nent is­sues re­lat­ed to the ex­er­cise.

“The pub­lic in­ter­est can­not be served if there is a flout­ing of the prop­er process,” he said.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Her­nan­dez’s lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen not­ed that his client’s col­league In­spec­tor Vene­ta Weaver-Ali, who al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise, had filed a sim­i­lar case and that an­oth­er col­league was ex­pect­ed to do the same lat­er this week.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed Weaver-Ali leave to pur­sue the case but warned that all three should not be al­lowed to pur­sue sep­a­rate lit­i­ga­tion as such would in­cur sig­nif­i­cant le­gal costs.

Sum­maris­ing the of­fi­cers’ com­plaints, Ramdeen claimed that they had ev­i­dence that col­leagues who had not re­ceived per­for­mance ap­praisals were al­lowed to sit the pro­mo­tion­al ex­am­i­na­tion and be in­ter­viewed.

“That is the first hur­dle you must cross be­fore you can even be con­sid­ered for pro­mo­tion,” Ramdeen said.

He al­so claimed that they were able to iden­ti­fy one col­league who did not at­tain the re­quired 50 per cent in the ex­am­i­na­tion stage but was still in­ter­viewed.

Ramdeen al­so point­ed out that none of the oth­er of­fi­cers, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the process but did not bring le­gal ac­tion, were not se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the in­junc­tion.

“There is no prej­u­dice to the oth­er par­ties,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad even­tu­al­ly ad­journed the case to Oc­to­ber 30 to give Find­ley time to file ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions on her ap­pli­ca­tion against the in­junc­tion.

Her­nan­dez was the head of the now-de­funct Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), which was es­tab­lished un­der the tenure of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

How­ev­er, he has been on sus­pen­sion since May 2021 when he was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice con­cern­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the treat­ment of the sus­pects held for the ab­duc­tion and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt in­clud­ing two, who died while in po­lice cus­tody.

There is no le­gal im­ped­i­ment for of­fi­cers to be pro­mot­ed while they have pend­ing crim­i­nal cas­es.

While Her­nan­dez’s lawyers are com­plain­ing that col­leagues with­out per­for­mance ap­praisals were al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise, they are al­so chal­leng­ing how the ap­praisals are done.

They claimed that Her­nan­dez and oth­er of­fi­cers re­ceived blan­ket “out­stand­ing” rat­ings with­out their per­for­mance be­ing crit­i­cal­ly as­sessed.

They sug­gest­ed that the “uni­ver­sal mark pro­ce­dure” was con­trary to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) mer­it-based sys­tem of pro­mo­tion pol­i­cy.

“Noth­ing is done pur­suant to the pol­i­cy. What hap­pens is the su­per­vis­ing of­fi­cer gives a mark of out­stand­ing...Be­cause of the sys­temic fail­ure to im­ple­ment the pol­i­cy, every­one gets the same mark,” Ramdeen said in Her­nan­dez’s court fil­ings.

Her­nan­dez is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh and Dayadai Har­ri­paul.

Weaver-Ali is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Singh, Ka­ri­na Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Sav­it­ri Sama­roo, and Vashisht Seep­er­sad.

Akee­nie Mur­ray and Ka­dine Matthew are ap­pear­ing along­side Find­ley for Hare­wood-Christo­pher and the AG’s Of­fice.