Derek Achong

A woman, who was wrong­ful­ly in­clud­ed in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) most want­ed list for fail­ing to pay a traf­fic tick­et, which was in fact paid, has threat­ened to sue for defama­tion. 

In a let­ter sent to Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work last Fri­day and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the in­sur­ance work­er, whose name was with­held based on the cir­cum­stances of the case, are claim­ing that the er­ror oc­curred last Thurs­day on the TTPS’s Be­yond the Tape pro­gramme on tele­vi­sion sta­tion TV6. 

Her lawyer Dereck Bal­li­ram ad­mit­ted that she was is­sued a fixed penal­ty traf­fic tick­et for breach­ing a traf­fic sign on No­vem­ber 19, 2015. 

How­ev­er, he not­ed that she made her first court ap­pear­ance on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2016, and was al­lowed to pay the fine on May 20, 2016. 

“Our client was ex­treme­ly shocked, sur­prised, em­bar­rassed and hu­mil­i­at­ed when she was fea­tured on the “most want­ed” slide of pic­tures, in­clu­sive and amongst oth­er per­sons want­ed for rob­bery, at­tempt­ed mur­der and var­i­ous of­fences,” Bal­li­ram said. 

Bal­li­ram ques­tioned whether a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done be­fore his client was in­clud­ed in the list as she main­tained that she was nev­er con­tact­ed by the TTPS over an out­stand­ing war­rant. 

“What is bla­tant is there was no prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the defam­a­to­ry words spo­ken in re­la­tion to our client along with the jux­ta­po­si­tion of her pho­to­graph was pub­lished care­less­ly and reck­less­ly with­out car­ing whether the words or in­for­ma­tion pub­lished were true or false, bring­ing our client to ridicule, ha­tred and con­tempt,” Bal­li­ram said. Bal­li­ram called for his client to be re­moved from the list and an un­equiv­o­cal re­trac­tion and apol­o­gy from the show’s hosts jour­nal­ist Mar­lon Hop­kin­son and Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der. 

The woman is al­so seek­ing rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion for the al­leged dam­age to her rep­u­ta­tion. 

Al­though Bal­li­ram gave the com­pa­ny 24 hours in which to re­spond, he had not re­ceived a re­sponse, up to late yes­ter­day. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Bal­li­ram al­so wrote to Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob to com­plain over the er­ror and to call for the war­rant to be re­called. 

“Our client, a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen of T&T has nev­er evad­ed the law. A care­ful, thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the TTPS would have re­vealed that she did in fact pay her fine,” Bal­li­ram said. 

“The ex­is­tence of an ar­rest war­rant in re­la­tion to our client’s mat­ter is fun­da­men­tal­ly un­jus­ti­fied,” he added.