Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion is pledg­ing its sup­port for Ca­reem James, a maxi taxi dri­ver ar­rest­ed on Tues­day for al­leged­ly fail­ing to as­sist po­lice of­fi­cers in ap­pre­hend­ing a sus­pect.

James, who is cur­rent­ly on bail with sure­ty, met with Guardian Me­dia at the Route 2 Maxi Taxi of­fice in City Gate, Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, he chose to have the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent, Bren­ton Knights, speak on his be­half re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 4.30 pm on Tues­day, of­fi­cers at­tached to the Tran­sit Po­lice Unit, who were on pa­trol in the City Gate area, went to the La Hor­quet­ta and Mal­oney Bay, al­so known as Bay 4.

A fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer ob­served a man hold­ing a pouch close­ly and grasp­ing it, which made her sus­pi­cious. She at­tempt­ed to search the man, and a strug­gle en­sued.

The of­fi­cer al­leged­ly called out to James, who was ex­it­ing a maxi taxi at the time, and said loud­ly, “Sir, can you as­sist me in the ex­e­cu­tion of my du­ties?” He re­spond­ed firm­ly, “No,” raised his hands in the air, and walked away.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 60 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, Chap­ter 15:01, if a per­son fails to as­sist a po­lice of­fi­cer in mak­ing an ar­rest or who is be­ing as­sault­ed, they can be ar­rest­ed, charged, and face a fine or jail time up­on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion. The act spec­i­fies that re­fusal or ne­glect to as­sist a po­lice of­fi­cer with­out rea­son­able cause can re­sult in a fine of $10,000 and im­pris­on­ment for one year. This was amend­ed in 2019 (Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions, Law En­force­ment Act 25 of 2019), in­creas­ing the penal­ties to $10,000 and three years of im­pris­on­ment.

James was grant­ed bail with sure­ty and re­leased.

Knights said, “It is al­leged that it seems to be some­thing ma­li­cious, and we will look at it from that point of view. Yes, we have some mi­nor teething is­sues. I don’t want to throw the whole unit un­der the bus be­cause we know for a fact they were con­ceived, in­ter­vened, and for­malised to as­sist the bus route due to the is­sues we had with the maxi-taxis.”

He added, “The as­so­ci­a­tion will stand with this in­di­vid­ual, and what­ev­er as­sis­tance he re­quires or asks of the as­so­ci­a­tion, we will try our best to help.”

Knights not­ed that it seemed the op­er­a­tor was be­ing tar­get­ed due to the lack of re­sources for the unit at City Gate.

“If that is the case in a sit­u­a­tion, then you need to come and prob­a­bly tell the as­so­ci­a­tion or car­ry it up the chain of com­mand. We will eval­u­ate the risk as­sess­ment for the man­pow­er re­quired. It boils down to safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, and that as­pect is not the du­ty of the maxi-taxi dri­vers and op­er­a­tors. When you’re dri­ving a maxi, you have 25 peo­ple be­hind you,” he ex­plained.