DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Ju­di­cia­ry has come un­der sharp crit­i­cism from the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) for its re­sponse to con­cerns about vir­tu­al court hear­ings be­ing con­duct­ed from po­lice sta­tions.

In a me­dia re­lease ad­dress­ing com­ments made by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Mnis­ter Roger Alexan­der, the Ju­di­cia­ry de­nied that po­lice sta­tions were func­tion­ing as court­rooms, stat­ing in­stead that ac­cused per­sons are sim­ply placed be­fore a com­put­er for a vir­tu­al ap­pear­ance.

The Ju­di­cia­ry al­so claimed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised that it could no longer pro­vide of­fi­cers to staff court­rooms, ex­cept in cas­es where pris­on­ers were present in the dock. This, the Ju­di­cia­ry said, now dic­tates how court op­er­a­tions are man­aged.

But TTPSS­WA pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son has strong­ly dis­agreed with the Ju­di­cia­ry’s claims, say­ing po­lice sta­tions are in ef­fect be­ing turned in­to court­rooms.

“There must be or­der in and with­in the prison of all courts of com­pe­tent ju­ris­dic­tion, that is the law of the land. When sta­tion spaces have to be con­vert­ed from vir­tu­al spaces for the court to car­ry out its du­ty, it sim­ply means all the com­mo­tion, all the ac­tiv­i­ties with­in a sta­tion en­vi­ron­ment must cease and de­sist,” Dick­son told Gua­di­an Me­dia.

“Be­cause it will cause a lev­el of dis­tur­bance to the sit­ting court. So, at that junc­ture there, your space, whether it is from 7 am in the morn­ing till 9 pm, when the last charged per­son is dealt with by virtue of the judge, that space is a court.”

ASP Dick­son al­so ques­tioned the Ju­di­cia­ry’s claim that the TTPS had de­clined to staff the courts, call­ing the as­ser­tion un­fa­mil­iar.

He not­ed that ded­i­cat­ed court staff with­in the TTPS, such as those in the Court and Process Branch, con­tin­ued to per­form their du­ties de­spite staffing short­ages.

“It is pass­ing strange that for as long as my 31 years of ser­vice, we know that notwith­stand­ing what­ev­er chal­lenges we have where hu­man re­sources re­sides, there still ex­ists des­ig­nat­ed court staff and they per­form their du­ty with a lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness.”

More­over, he ac­knowl­edged ex­ist­ing ten­sions be­tween po­lice and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly around of­fi­cers en­ter­ing courts with firearms. How­ev­er, he ar­gued that this mea­sure pro­vid­ed added se­cu­ri­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in cas­es in­volv­ing sen­si­tive ev­i­dence like firearms, drugs, or am­mu­ni­tion.

Dick­son fur­ther em­pha­sised that there has been a com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­down be­tween the Ju­di­cia­ry and the po­lice, say­ing the blur­ring of roles is prob­lem­at­ic.

“To in­con­ve­nience the po­lice in the in­ter­est of jus­tice, which we are the per­sons who are en­forc­ing the law, and for us to be en­forc­ing the law and yet still say­ing that when you are dis­pens­ing jus­tice to the per­sons, the per­sons are still with­in the cur­tails of the sta­tion, that in it­self does not sug­gest to me and to the as­so­ci­a­tion to be the best way of show­ing both sep­a­ra­tion of pow­er and trans­paren­cy in the process.”

On the Ju­di­cia­ry’s stat­ed con­cerns over the cost of trans­port­ing ac­cused per­sons, Dick­son clar­i­fied that such ex­pens­es are not borne by the Ju­di­cia­ry. He ar­gued that vir­tu­al hear­ings should be held in ex­ist­ing court fa­cil­i­ties, which he de­scribed as “ghost towns” due to un­der­use.

Mean­while, Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj said the Ju­di­cia­ry has ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to meet and added that ef­forts are be­ing made to sched­ule the meet­ing this week, af­ter which the path for­ward should be­come clear­er.

“We are hop­ing to fix a meet­ing this week. Af­ter the sit­u­a­tion should be more clear­er as to a way for­ward,” Ma­haraj said.

Ef­forts to reach Min­is­ter Alexan­der and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.