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Friday, July 25, 2025

Man challenges TTPS standing orders for destroying notes, judge strikes them out

by

Derek Achong
1084 days ago
20220805
Justice Kevin Ramcharan

Justice Kevin Ramcharan

SHILREY BAHADUR

Two T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Stand­ing Or­ders, al­low­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to de­stroy their of­fi­cial notes with­in two and three years of crim­i­nal cas­es be­ing de­ter­mined by the courts, have been struck down. 

High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran made the or­der on Wednes­day, as he up­held a law­suit from a Gas­par­il­lo man who chal­lenged the Stand­ings Or­ders, af­ter he was un­able to ob­tain the records to pur­sue a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case against the State over be­ing charged for ob­struct­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer and us­ing in­sult­ing lan­guage to­wards him. 

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings in the case, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Keron Phillip was charged with the of­fences af­ter he chal­lenged the wreck­ing of his car in May 2014. 

Phillip re­port­ed­ly parked his car along Mur­ray Street in Wood­brook and found that it was miss­ing when he re­turned sev­er­al hours lat­er. 

Phillip then learned his car had been wrecked and even­tu­al­ly found it at an im­pound lot. He claimed that he spoke to a po­lice of­fi­cer at the lo­ca­tion and re­quest­ed an ex­pla­na­tion, as he claimed he did not vi­o­late any park­ing laws or re­stric­tions. He was told he had to pay the $500 first. De­spite com­ply­ing, the of­fi­cer still re­fused to re­lease the car. 

Phillip claimed that the of­fi­cer in­stead be­came ag­gres­sive and or­dered him to va­cate the com­pound. While leav­ing, he asked an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer the same ques­tion. Be­fore the of­fi­cer could re­spond, how­ev­er, Phillip was ar­rest­ed by his col­league. He was sub­se­quent­ly charged with the two of­fences. 

He made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore a mag­is­trate up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion on his be­half in Jan­u­ary 2017.

In April 2020, Phillip’s lawyers sent a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for of­fi­cial records re­lat­ed to his ar­rest, which was need­ed to pur­sue a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case against the State. 

They were told that the of­fi­cers’ pock­et di­aries and the sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts for the im­pound lot could not be dis­closed, as they were de­stroyed pur­suant to TTPS Stand­ing Or­der 16 (11) and 17 (13).

Un­der Stand­ing Or­der 16 (11), po­lice of­fi­cers are al­lowed to de­stroy their pock­et di­aries two years af­ter a case is de­ter­mined. 

The oth­er pro­hibits a sta­tion di­ary from be­ing de­stroyed with­in three years of the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a case in which it was used. 

In the law­suit, Phillip’s lawyers sub­mit­ted that the stand­ing or­ders were un­rea­son­able, as they al­lowed for the dis­pos­al of the records be­fore the four-year lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od un­der the Lim­i­ta­tions of Cer­tain Ac­tions Act, for bring­ing ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion and false im­pris­on­ment claims af­ter crim­i­nal charges are dis­missed. 

“With­out the said doc­u­ments, the Claimant would not be able to ob­tain prop­er le­gal ad­vice and may be faced with an un­nec­es­sary and some­what in­sur­mount­able hur­dle in prov­ing his case and there­fore, is de­nied any op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­tain jus­tice,” they said. 

In re­sponse to the law­suit, the State pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence from sev­er­al se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers. 

In his af­fi­davit, ASP Lu­cien Fer­gu­son, of the TTPS’s Hu­man Re­source Branch, claimed that the pol­i­cy was due to is­sues with lim­it­ed stor­age space for the records. 

In his ev­i­dence, act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) William Nurse, who chairs the TTPS’s Stand­ing Or­ders Com­mit­tee, not­ed that the poli­cies were de­vised al­most 40 years ago and are in need of up­dat­ing. 

ACP Nurse not­ed that the com­mit­tee is cur­rent­ly in the process of re­view­ing the stand­ing or­ders, in­clud­ing the two struck out by Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran, but was de­layed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

“From ini­tial dis­cus­sions, the re­draft will give con­sid­er­a­tion to not per­mit­ting the de­struc­tion of di­aries and sta­tion di­aries,” ACP Nurse said in his ev­i­dence be­fore the case was even­tu­al­ly de­ter­mined. 

In an email no­ti­fi­ca­tion which was sent to the par­ties on Wednes­day, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran up­held Phillip’s claim over the un­rea­son­able­ness of the spe­cif­ic stand­ing or­ders and or­dered that they be struck out. 

Phillip was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Dr Che Din­di­al and Jared Ja­groo. 

Michael Quam­i­na, Te­nille Ramkissoon, Vin­cent Jar­dine and Tiffany Kissoon rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in the case.


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