Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice of­fi­cer has been freed of charges for al­leged­ly as­sault­ing a fel­low of­fi­cer in a dis­agree­ment over his cus­tomer ser­vice skills. 

Last week, act­ing Cor­po­ral Lyle Pan­tin was found not guilty of us­ing in­sult­ing lan­guage, re­sist­ing ar­rest and as­sault at the end of his tri­al be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Niko­las Ali. 

The charges re­lat­ed to an in­ci­dent at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion on May 25, 2021. 

Pan­tin, who was as­signed to the West­ern Di­vi­sion, was off du­ty and went to the sta­tion to en­quire about a friend who was de­tained.  

He al­leged­ly con­front­ed a po­lice of­fi­cer af­ter he (the of­fi­cer) spoke to him and his friend, a sol­dier, in an ag­gres­sive and loud man­ner. 

Pan­tin claimed that the of­fi­cer grabbed him, pushed him against a wall and hand­cuffed him. 

He was kept in a hold­ing cell overnight be­fore be­ing charged by a Sergeant and grant­ed bail. 

In his de­fence, Pan­tin de­nied com­mit­ting the of­fences and claimed that he was framed for chal­leng­ing the of­fi­cer. 

"I was mere­ly mak­ing an en­quiry and was shocked at the lev­el of un­pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ag­gres­sive con­duct dis­played by the po­lice based on the mak­ing of a sim­ple en­quiry about per­sons de­tained dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic," Pan­tin said. 

Dur­ing Pan­tin's tri­al, his lawyer, Kei­th Beck­les, quizzed the of­fi­cer and his col­leagues at the sta­tion over the in­ci­dent. 

Sev­er­al of them re­peat­ed­ly claimed that they could not re­call key de­tails of what tran­spired. 

In his clos­ing sub­mis­sions, Beck­les point­ed out that the ev­i­dence was rid­dled with in­con­sis­ten­cies. 

He sug­gest­ed that there was no prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion as CCTV footage from cam­eras in­side the sta­tion were not ten­dered in­to ev­i­dence. 

He al­so not­ed that the of­fi­cers in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the in­ci­dent failed to make con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous notes of the in­ci­dent in their pock­et and sta­tion di­aries. 

In de­cid­ing the case, Mag­is­trate Ali raised con­cerns with the pros­e­cu­tion's ev­i­dence as he found that Pan­tin and his friends, who were with him at the sta­tion, were more cred­i­ble.

He not­ed that any doubts about the ev­i­dence should be re­solved in Pan­tin's favour. 

The out­come of the case means that Pan­tin's sus­pen­sion would now be lift­ed. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Pan­tin is ex­pect­ed to file a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case over what tran­spired. 

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) was rep­re­sent­ed by Tim­o­thy Welling­ton.