An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A woman po­lice con­sta­ble (WPC) was ar­rest­ed and re­mained in po­lice cus­tody yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing an al­leged rob­bery on Thurs­day.

The of­fi­cer, who lives in West Trinidad and is at­tached to the Of­fice of the In­spec­tor at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, re­port­ed be­ing robbed of over $100,000 in cash as she walked along In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

The mon­ey was said to be fees col­lect­ed at the sta­tion and was to be de­posit­ed at the Trea­sury on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

The mis­cel­la­neous cash was said to have been col­lect­ed over a pe­ri­od of time as peo­ple sub­mit­ted pay­ments for cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter, po­lice re­ports and re­new­al of firearm per­mits.

Video footage cap­tured by CCTV cam­eras sit­u­at­ed on the perime­ter of the po­lice sta­tion con­firmed the of­fi­cer left the sta­tion via the back door.

Re­ports claimed the of­fi­cer, who func­tions as a clerk, walked from East Dry Riv­er to the Trea­sury, which is out­side the norm, as she is usu­al­ly pro­vid­ed with an armed es­cort when de­posit­ing cash.
It was fur­ther al­leged that up­on ar­rival at the Trea­sury, she de­cid­ed to leave with­out mak­ing the de­posit be­cause the line was too long.

On her way back to the sta­tion, the of­fi­cer was close to Cha­con Street when a sus­pect wear­ing a grey hood­ed sweat­shirt re­port­ed­ly grabbed the bag from her and ran off.

A 20-sec­ond video record­ed by a CCTV cam­era along Cha­con Street and post­ed on so­cial me­dia showed the sus­pect walk­ing up the street as the smil­ing of­fi­cer walked be­hind.

At one point, she ap­peared to be ges­tic­u­lat­ing to the sus­pect, af­ter which she then chased af­ter him.
The sus­pect was seen smil­ing broad­ly be­fore run­ning off. The of­fi­cer was ini­tial­ly ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers and in­ter­ro­gat­ed be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to a po­lice sta­tion in East Trinidad.

Po­lice were yes­ter­day search­ing for the sus­pect, who re­mained on the run.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said no di­rec­tives were is­sued to the fe­male of­fi­cer to pro­ceed with any de­posit, and that she would have act­ed on her own.

Sources claimed the in­ci­dent led to a shake-up at the sta­tion, with the sec­ond clerk, who shared the of­fice with the WPC, be­ing hand­ed a trans­fer no­tice yes­ter­day.

The in­spec­tor and sergeant were al­so among those said to have been trans­ferred.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the in­ci­dent has al­so led to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is­su­ing re­vised Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dures for all po­lice sta­tions, specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing how clerks are to op­er­ate.