Derek Achong

A po­lice con­sta­ble who was al­leged­ly shot by an off-du­ty prison of­fi­cer while ex­e­cut­ing a search war­rant at his home in 2015, has won his law­suit against Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith for the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the in­ci­dent. 

In a 39-page judg­ment de­liv­ered at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain last Fri­day, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed up­held the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) law­suit brought against Grif­fith by PC Vishal Singh. 

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence in the case, on Au­gust 10, 2015, Singh and his col­leagues from the East­ern Di­vi­sion were ex­e­cut­ing a search war­rant at the San­gre Grande home of Ru­el Ac­coo when Singh was shot.  Singh spent sev­er­al weeks re­cov­er­ing in hos­pi­tal but doc­tors were un­able to re­move the bul­let that re­mains lodged in his back. He has since re­turned to ac­tive du­ty. 

Last Au­gust, Singh made the FOIA re­quest for in­for­ma­tion on whether Ac­coo was a li­cenced firearm hold­er, whether he was li­cenced to pos­sess the firearm used to al­leged­ly shoot him, and whether the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons had grant­ed per­mis­sion for Ac­coo to car­ry a firearm for per­son­al pro­tec­tion.  Singh al­so asked for de­tails on the sta­tus of the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent and an ex­pla­na­tion of why Ac­coo had not been charged more than four years lat­er. 

Grif­fith, through So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, did not re­spond to Singh’s le­gal threat un­til af­ter it was filed and promised to dis­close some of the re­quest­ed ma­te­r­i­al.  How­ev­er, two months lat­er, Grif­fith’s of­fice changed its mind. 

In the judge­ment, Mo­hammed ruled that the change was not war­rant­ed. 

“In my opin­ion, to per­mit the with­draw­al of the Jan­u­ary no­tice is to con­done to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able con­duct by the de­fen­dant in cir­cum­stances where there was no ex­pla­na­tion for such con­duct and more. par­tic­u­lar­ly where his con­duct de­layed the pro­ceed­ings in this mat­ter,” Mo­hammed said.

The judge said the con­duct was in­con­sis­tent with the mod­ern ap­proach to lit­i­ga­tion. 

Deal­ing with Grif­fith’s claim that he could not dis­close in­for­ma­tion on whether Ac­coo had a firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) and the FUL for the gun used to wound Singh as it would re­veal con­fi­den­tial per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, Mo­hammed ruled that the records could be redact­ed to ap­pease Singh and Grif­fith.  Mo­hammed added that even if the in­for­ma­tion was ex­empt from dis­clo­sure un­der the leg­is­la­tion, Grif­fith should have still con­sid­ered dis­clos­ing it based on pub­lic in­ter­est con­cerns in the case. 

“The dis­clo­sure of the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed will go a long way in al­lay­ing any per­cep­tion from mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice that the De­fen­dant is not in­volved in any cov­er-up of the in­ci­dent,” Mo­hammed said. 

The judge or­dered the dis­clo­sure of the in­for­ma­tion on Ac­coo’s FUL and or­dered Grif­fith to re­con­sid­er Singh’s oth­er re­quests in light of her judge­ment. Grif­fith was giv­en 14 days in which to give his re­spons­es. The Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was al­so or­dered to pay Singh’s le­gal costs for the law­suit. 

Singh was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ganesh Sa­roop, and Alana Ram­baran, while Joel Rop­er and Shaun Mor­ris rep­re­sent­ed Grif­fith.