DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man from Diego Mar­tin, who was beat­en and false­ly charged by a group of po­lice of­fi­cers in 2017, is set to re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion from the State.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Nicholas Owen, of Up­per La Puer­ta Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin, as he grant­ed him a de­fault judg­ment against the State yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion was large­ly based on the fact that the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al did not file a de­fence and counter-claim af­ter Owen brought his law­suit.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad still al­lowed state at­tor­ney Keron May­nard to cross-ex­am­ine Owen over his claims briefly, he even­tu­al­ly found that Owen’s lawyers Lemuel Mur­phy, Alex­ia Romero, and Sid­diq Man­zano had proven their case.

Al­though he ruled that Owen was en­ti­tled to dam­ages for as­sault and bat­tery, wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion, such is to be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Owen oc­curred in his com­mu­ni­ty on No­vem­ber 5, 2017.

Owen was re­port­ed­ly walk­ing to his home, when he was stopped by a group of po­lice of­fi­cers, who were on mo­bile pa­trol, in­clud­ing one who pre­vi­ous­ly lived in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Owen claimed that the of­fi­cers threat­ened him with their firearms and ar­rest­ed him de­spite not find­ing any­thing il­le­gal on him.

He claimed that he was tak­en to the West End Po­lice Sta­tion where he was re­peat­ed­ly slapped by his for­mer neigh­bour while hand­cuffed.

“Each slap was more painful than the one that came be­fore it. All I had wished was that all of this had stopped,” he said.

Owen claimed that an­oth­er of­fi­cer joined in and punched him sev­er­al times in his head.

He claimed that his for­mer neigh­bour told him that he would kill him even­tu­al­ly.

“When I heard the state­ment I re­mem­bered all the pre­vi­ous times I was stopped and ar­rest­ed by the po­lice and be­gan to think that it was all part of a plan to have me killed,” he said.

Owen was held at the sta­tion for al­most four hours be­fore he was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment.

Af­ter be­ing dis­charged, Owen was tak­en back to the sta­tion where he was charged with us­ing ob­scene lan­guage, ob­struct­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, and re­sist­ing ar­rest.

Owen was grant­ed bail and made a re­port to the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB), which in­ves­ti­gates crimes al­leged­ly com­mit­ted by po­lice of­fi­cers.

In April 2018, the three of­fi­cers were charged. The most se­nior of­fi­cer, a cor­po­ral, was charged with kid­nap­ping, as­sault oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm, false im­pris­on­ment and two counts of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. Owen’s for­mer neigh­bour was ac­cused of as­sault, and false im­pris­on­ment, while the third of­fi­cer was on­ly charged with as­sault.

The cor­po­ral and Owen’s for­mer neigh­bour were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al at the end of their pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, while their col­league was freed.

Al­though the duo’s names were men­tioned through­out the court fil­ings, they were with­held by this news­pa­per as they are still await­ing tri­al.

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) even­tu­al­ly dis­con­tin­ued the charges against Owen af­ter a video of his ar­rest, which dis­proved the claims made by the of­fi­cers over his al­leged con­duct, was wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia.

In ad­di­tion to com­pen­sa­tion for the pain, suf­fer­ing and em­bar­rass­ment he suf­fered, Owen sought spe­cial dam­ages as he claimed that he lost out on $7,200 in in­come as a gen­er­al con­trac­tor dur­ing the pe­ri­od he was held on re­mand be­fore be­ing grant­ed bail.

He al­so sought $1,000 as he claimed that his clothes and cell­phone, which were seized up­on his ar­rest, were not re­turned to him.

In up­hold­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad praised the PSB for its “en­cour­ag­ing” work.

“One has to hope that this sort of proac­tive and fair ap­proach by the PSB con­tin­ues,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so sug­gest­ed that their work is es­sen­tial in the fight against crime.

“The fight against crime will on­ly be suc­cess­ful when of­fi­cers be­have ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and there is pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence that they would act fair­ly,” he said.