CPO gets death threat

Shane Su­perville &

Akash Sama­roo

Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dar­ryl Din­di­al says a re­cent threat to his life made on so­cial me­dia has been “un­com­fort­able” for him as he is sim­ply do­ing his job, but has thanked the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for their re­sponse in find­ing the per­son re­spon­si­ble.

A po­lice me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day re­port­ed that 49-year-old To­ba­go handy­man, Ja­son Wright, was ar­rest­ed and charged for mak­ing a state­ment prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty. How­ev­er, he was or­dered to serve com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice af­ter plead­ing guilty and show­ing re­morse for his ac­tions.

It was re­port­ed that the is­sue arose when Wright com­ment­ed on a Tik­Tok video re­fer­ring to Din­di­al, “He is a PNM, he will not pay that mon­ey at no time ... peo­ple need to fix him good ... take his life peo­ple.”

A re­port about the so­cial me­dia post was made by Din­di­al and To­ba­go po­lice ar­rest­ed Wright at his home, where he ad­mit­ted to mak­ing the com­ment.

Wright, known on­line as “Bu­ju B,” ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Gill at the Scar­bor­ough Mag­is­trates’ 2nd Court charged with mak­ing a state­ment prej­u­di­cial to safe­ty un­der Sec­tion 241 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions.

Po­lice said Din­di­al re­ceived a What­sApp mes­sage on No­vem­ber 24 link­ing to a Tik­Tok video con­tain­ing a pub­lic ser­vice an­nounce­ment. Un­der the post, a user lat­er iden­ti­fied as Wright wrote what was deemed a threat­en­ing mes­sage to Din­di­al.

Din­di­al told in­ves­ti­ga­tors he feared for his life and his fam­i­ly’s safe­ty and filed a re­port the same day.

A team led by ASP Pig­gott and In­spec­tor Mo­hammed vis­it­ed Wright’s home, where he ad­mit­ted post­ing the mes­sage and ex­pressed re­morse. He was ar­rest­ed, and three cell­phones were seized be­fore Ag. Cpl Moses laid the charge.

The court or­dered Wright to per­form 240 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. If he fails to com­ply, he will have to pay a $3,000 fine or serve six months’ sim­ple im­pris­on­ment.

Fail­ure to com­ply will lead to a fine of $3,000 or six months’ sim­ple im­pris­on­ment.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the rul­ing yes­ter­day, Din­di­al, who had fi­nal talks on the 10 per cent wage in­crease with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day, said such threats were un­com­fort­able to him even over so­cial me­dia. How­ev­er, he sais he was pleased with the dili­gence of the po­lice, as he fur­ther stressed the need for peo­ple to be mind­ful of their con­duct on­line.

“I’m just hap­py the TTPS was able to deal with the mat­ter quick­ly,” Din­di­al said.

“We need to have re­spon­si­ble re­marks be­cause peo­ple see these things and they think that they are re­al. It is un­for­tu­nate that these things oc­cur. It could have been avoid­ed if more re­spon­si­ble re­marks were made on the mat­ter.”

Din­di­al fur­ther not­ed that while his of­fice has at­tract­ed ver­bal at­tacks and crit­i­cism from some on­line who view him as be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly dif­fi­cult, par­tic­u­lar­ly with wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, he said his task re­quired him to bal­ance in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions with the fi­nan­cial con­straints of the Gov­ern­ment.

“At the end of the day, there must be a bal­ance ... it must be a sit­u­a­tion where what­ev­er is of­fered must be af­ford­ed and sus­tained, so it is a high­ly re­spon­si­ble po­si­tion that re­quires one to be able to nav­i­gate be­tween eco­nom­ics at the po­lit­i­cal lev­el as in­struc­tions and un­der­stand­ing what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground with labour and build­ing that bridge.”

This was the sec­ond sce­nario dur­ing the on­go­ing SoE in which a mem­ber of the pub­lic was ar­rest­ed for com­ments deemed to be prej­u­di­cial to safe­ty un­der Sec­tion 241 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions.

Last month, Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent Olive Green-Jack, 44, was de­tained af­ter mak­ing com­ments deemed to be en­cour­ag­ing vi­o­lence against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on so­cial me­dia.

Green-Jack was de­tained specif­i­cal­ly for so­cial me­dia posts that fea­tured an im­age of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Philip­pine home and her call for the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to tar­get the res­i­dence.

The SoE or­der stat­ed that Green-Jack “made and pub­lished pub­lic posts and/or com­ments on so­cial me­dia ad­dressed to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment in an at­tempt to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.”