Four po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in the now-con­tro­ver­sial traf­fic stop and search of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s daugh­ter and son-in-law have been trans­ferred out of the Cou­va CID.

Po­lice sources at that sta­tion told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that two of­fi­cers were trans­ferred on Wednes­day when they re­port­ed for du­ty at Cou­va and the oth­er two were trans­ferred when they turned up for work yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Two of the of­fi­cers have been post­ed to the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion, one at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion and the oth­er at the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion. 

The of­fi­cers, Cpl Badree, WPC Fran­cis, WPC Bap­tiste and PC Goin­da, were all in­volved in a stop and search of the Com­mis­sion­er’s daugh­ter T’Shana Grif­fith-Bain and her hus­band Da Vvian Bain on Mon­day.

Dur­ing the in­ci­dent, which Grif­fith-Bain al­leged was record­ed by both Badree and Goin­da on their cell­phones, the cou­ple’s ve­hi­cle was al­so searched. The cou­ple has since re­leased their own state­ments on the in­ci­dent and on Thurs­day, their at­tor­ney Jagdeo Singh said they in­tend to take the State to court over it.

The cou­ple’s law­suit states that the po­lice’s right to stop and search the pub­lic should be clear­ly de­fined. Singh told Guardian Me­dia po­lice who can­not act with­out be­ing abu­sive should not be in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

The cou­ple al­so ar­gues that their lives were put in dan­ger by the dis­sem­i­na­tion of their im­ages and ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tion num­ber in the videos that were post­ed on so­cial me­dia on Mon­day night.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) con­firmed on Wednes­day that it had start­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent. The Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has stat­ed sev­er­al times he will not com­ment on the in­ci­dent, say­ing he will not get in­volved.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the source at the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion ques­tioned the rea­sons for the trans­fers.

“Clear­ly, there has been some in­ter­ven­tion in some way to ini­ti­ate such a move. There are many sim­i­lar video record­ing in­ter­ac­tions with po­lice whilst ex­e­cut­ing their du­ties, which may have caused the ini­ti­a­tion of sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Pub­lic of­fice be­ing used for pri­vate gain and ben­e­fit per­haps?” the source asked.

But in an in­ter­view with se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, Guardian Me­dia was told the of­fi­cers were trans­ferred be­cause of their ac­tions on Wednes­day when PCA in­ves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion to start com­pil­ing in­for­ma­tion for their in­de­pen­dent probe.

A se­nior of­fi­cer said at that time, two of the of­fi­cers re­fused to al­low the PCA in­ves­ti­ga­tors in­to the sta­tion and al­so re­fused to give them ac­cess to the sta­tion di­ary. As such, the se­nior of­fi­cer said they were trans­ferred to pre­vent them from fur­ther in­ter­fer­ing in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the mat­ter. In par­tic­u­lar, the se­nior of­fi­cer said they want­ed to en­sure that there was no “padding” of the sta­tion di­ary to change the ac­count of the in­ci­dent that was pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed.