JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer, who has been sus­pend­ed since Jan­u­ary 2021 af­ter be­ing charged with beat­ing his then-girl­friend, was freed of the charge yes­ter­day af­ter the State re­peat­ed­ly failed to pro­duce wit­ness­es to sub­stan­ti­ate the al­le­ga­tion, in­clud­ing the com­plainant.

The case against the of­fi­cer, Jar­rell God­dard, was that on Ju­ly 3, 2020, while the pair were seat­ed in a car along Al­cazar Street, St Clair, he al­leged­ly beat his girl­friend with his po­lice-is­sued ba­ton fol­low­ing an ar­gu­ment over in­fi­deli­ty in their re­la­tion­ship. The woman al­leged­ly sus­tained in­juries to the right side of her face and up­per back.

The in­ci­dent was ini­tial­ly re­port­ed to the Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit.

God­dard was ar­rest­ed on De­cem­ber 1, 2020, while on du­ty at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion and was sub­se­quent­ly charged.

Be­fore dis­miss­ing the mat­ter, Se­nior Mag­is­trate De­bra Quin­tyne crit­i­cised the ex­pla­na­tion of­fered by State pros­e­cu­tor Stephanie Hodge that the com­plainant could not be served with a court sum­mons to at­tend and give ev­i­dence.

She ques­tioned why the pros­e­cu­tion had failed to have a sum­mons pre­pared for the com­plainant us­ing the tra­di­tion­al process be­fore the courts tran­si­tioned to vir­tu­al hear­ings.

The Se­nior Mag­is­trate said that be­fore the shift to vir­tu­al hear­ings, pros­e­cu­tors en­sured po­lice of­fi­cers had sum­mons­es or war­rants pre­pared by jus­tices of the peace and ap­proved by the courts, rather than re­ly­ing sole­ly on the court to is­sue sum­mons­es.

Quin­tyne said de­spite the ob­jec­tions of de­fence at­tor­neys Bhi­mal Ma­haraj and Kavi­ta Moonasar, she had ad­journed the mat­ter at the last hear­ing in­stead of dis­miss­ing it, on­ly to now be forced to do so be­cause of the State’s in­abil­i­ty to se­cure the at­ten­dance of the main wit­ness.

The court al­so heard from the charg­ing of­fi­cer, WPC Nel­isha Coop­er, who said the com­plainant had moved from her Mor­vant home to San Fer­nan­do and she had been un­able to lo­cate her to serve the sum­mons.