An­na-lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice con­sta­ble who was last at­tached to the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion has been charged with pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion.

PC Avinash Kussie was ar­rest­ed on Au­gust 17 af­ter of­fi­cers, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence from an ex­ter­nal in­tel­li­gence agency, in­ter­cept­ed a black Nis­san Syl­phy he was dri­ving along South­ern Main Road, Cou­va.

Kussie was off-du­ty at the time.

The ex­er­cise was led by DCP Suzette Mar­tin and su­per­vised by ASP Mark Her­nan­dez. It in­volved mem­bers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Op­er­a­tions Unit and Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force, Area South.

Of­fi­cers searched Kussie’s ve­hi­cle and al­leged­ly found a black plas­tic bag con­tain­ing ten rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

He was sub­se­quent­ly de­tained at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion while search­es were con­duct­ed at his lock­er at the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion and his home. Noth­ing il­le­gal was found dur­ing those search­es.

Fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tion with the Di­vi­sion’s Le­gal Ad­vis­er, a file was sub­mit­ted to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) on Mon­day for ad­vice and guid­ance. In­struc­tions were re­ceived from the DPP’s Of­fice yes­ter­day for Kussie to be charged.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) un­equiv­o­cal­ly stat­ed: “No of­fi­cer is ex­empt from the laws he or she is sworn to up­hold.”

The TTPS added: “Where a mem­ber of this or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­leged to have breached the law, that mem­ber will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, charged, and made to face the full weight of the ju­di­cial process, with the same rigour, and with­out ex­cep­tion, ap­plied to any oth­er cit­i­zen.”