Brent Thomas criminal case permanently closed

Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

Brent Thomas’ name first sur­faced pe­riph­er­al­ly to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion the TTPS was con­duct­ing.

In court doc­u­ments, the TTPS was orig­i­nal­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing Tu­na­puna busi­ness­man Ted­dy Phillip in re­la­tion to ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties with re­gard to firearms pos­ses­sion.

It was dur­ing the course of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions—and ac­cord­ing to po­lice state­ments, it was Thomas’ con­duct dur­ing their in­quiries—which raised their sus­pi­cions about him.

Iron­i­cal­ly, it was the TTPS’ own con­duct in pur­su­ing Thomas which even­tu­al­ly led to the clo­sure of any crim­i­nal case against him by High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad in April 2023.

Phillip was a cus­tomer of Thomas’ firearm busi­ness, Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre in Aranguez. The po­lice case in­to Phillip be­gan in Au­gust 2021.

Giv­en the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty in his FUL, the po­lice sought to ques­tion Thomas on the mat­ter.

For con­text, the Phillip in­ves­ti­ga­tion was on­go­ing when for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith was un­der fire for the is­suance of Firearm User Li­cences (FULs) and one month be­fore the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) re­cruit­ed re­tired judge Stan­ley John to in­ves­ti­gate the is­suance of FULs. And pri­or to that, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, had al­ready re­ceived a re­port on the is­suance of FULs from re­tired Rear Ad­mi­ral Hay­den Pritchard and re­tired Snr Supt Arthur Bar­ring­ton.

The Phillip in­ves­ti­ga­tion was be­ing pur­sued by a mul­ti-de­part­ment team in the TTPS, which in­clud­ed ASP Lan­cast­er-El­lis of the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID), Su­per­in­ten­dent Suzette Mar­tin from the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) and for­mer Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Wen­dell Lu­cas of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) and Sgt Matthew Hay­wood.

The team was put to­geth­er by for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob in ear­ly 2021 to spear­head an in­ter­nal au­dit of the records of the Firearm Sec­tion of the TTPS to avoid du­plic­i­ty.

In an af­fi­davit dat­ed Ju­ly 18, 2025, Ja­cob said that while in his role as DCP (In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions), he was privy to da­ta from the E-Trace sys­tem, em­a­nat­ing from the US Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (AFT) based in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, which showed that a num­ber of firearms re­cov­ered by the TTPS were in the hands of li­censed firearms deal­ers in T&T. To this end, the merged unit was charged with in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

In Sgt Matthew Hay­wood’s po­lice state­ment, he was in­ves­ti­gat­ing a crim­i­nal case in­to Phillip, whom he had ar­rest­ed in Au­gust 2021.

Dur­ing the course of his in­ves­ti­ga­tions, he dis­cov­ered that Phillip had pur­chased two firearms un­der two sep­a­rate Firearms Users Li­cences (FULs)—213/2017 and 173/2017—from Thomas.

As a re­sult of his in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he sought a war­rant to search Thomas’ prop­er­ty on Au­gust 8, 2022. He said that while he vis­it­ed Thomas’ premis­es, he was pro­vid­ed copies of records from his Firearms Trans­ac­tion Reg­is­ter, which shows the firearm pur­chase un­der the two said num­bers.

Ac­cord­ing to his state­ment, when Hay­wood re­quest­ed fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, the meet­ing end­ed.

In Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment, he de­scribed it as an un­re­solved con­flict of fact in how the meet­ing end­ed.

In Hay­wood’s view, Thomas had left the room with­out ex­pla­na­tion.

“This con­duct, along with the fail­ure to resched­ule the meet­ing or pro­vide the doc­u­ments that were re­quest­ed, caused Sergeant Hay­wood to be­come sus­pi­cious, es­pe­cial­ly since the FUL Reg­is­ter at the Firearms Per­mit Unit bore ‘white off’ where the num­ber 173 of 2017 was lo­cat­ed. That sus­pi­cion was that the first claimant was con­ceal­ing doc­u­ments at the sec­ond claimant’s premis­es in re­la­tion to the il­le­gal sale of a Glock pis­tol firearm to Ted­dy Phillip, doc­u­ments which in­clud­ed the said be­ing ap­proval let­ter, which the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice gives to pur­chase the firearm, along with the FUL book­let in the name of Ted­dy Phillip, signed by the com­mis­sion­er. He there­fore ob­tained a search war­rant to search the sec­ond claimant’s premis­es,” Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment said.

In Thomas’ view, he had fa­cil­i­tat­ed the meet­ing with Hay­wood and showed him his reg­is­ter. He said that at that point, Hay­wood went to re­trieve his cell­phone in his car, and Thomas was late for an­oth­er ap­point­ment.

“He spoke about the en­try on the reg­is­trar be­ing a cler­i­cal er­ror which was eas­i­ly rec­ti­fi­able, but did not pro­duce records for the Glock firearm which was the sub­ject of the en­quiry in ques­tion, ie the FUL book­let and ap­proval let­ter re­quest­ed by Sergeant Hay­wood.

“This con­flict seems ma­te­r­i­al since the abort­ing of the meet­ing and the fail­ure to pro­vide the doc­u­ments or to have any fol­low-up raised the sus­pi­cion which Sergeant Hay­wood re­ferred to in his af­fi­davit and caused him to seek to al­le­vi­ate that sus­pi­cion by ob­tain­ing the search war­rant. It is quite pos­si­ble that had the meet­ing pro­ceed­ed and had there been a full and frank dis­cus­sion with re­spect to what hap­pened with that par­tic­u­lar en­try in re­la­tion to 173/2017 and the pur­chase of the Glock firearm, any such search war­rant may not have been pur­sued,” Ram­per­sad said.

In Hay­wood’s state­ment, he dis­agreed with Thomas’ claim that the white­out was a cler­i­cal er­ror.

“Who made the er­ror? When was it made? How was it made? When was it dis­cov­ered, if at all? What was done af­ter the er­ror was dis­cov­ered, if any­thing?” Ram­per­sad had asked be­fore con­clud­ing that the court didn’t have in­for­ma­tion to make such a de­ter­mi­na­tion.

In his judg­ment, Ram­per­sad not­ed that he did not have in­for­ma­tion on the en­try, nei­ther did the em­ploy­ee give ev­i­dence on such.

“With­out all of that in­for­ma­tion, all the court has is a stat­ed pur­port­ed er­ror with­out foun­da­tion­al ev­i­dence along with cir­cum­stances which sug­gest some sort of de­lib­er­ate eva­sion by the first claimant (Thomas), there­by fu­elling sus­pi­cion and doubts,” he not­ed.

Thomas’ case against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) had fo­cused on his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights as a cit­i­zen.

What Thomas had sought from the courts was, among oth­er things: “A de­c­la­ra­tion that the ar­rest, de­ten­tion and forcible ab­duc­tion with­in, and the re­moval of the first claimant from the ju­ris­dic­tion of Bar­ba­dos to this coun­try, at the be­hest of the State of T&T act­ing through its ser­vants and or agents, were gross­ly abu­sive, un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, un­law­ful, un­nec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate and in par­tic­u­lar, con­tra­vened the first claimant’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights guar­an­teed un­der Sec­tion 4(a),(b) and (g) and Sec­tion 5(2)(h) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of T&T, and was oth­er­wise con­trary to the rule of law.”

It’s this chal­lenge which Ram­per­sad’s judg­ment is fo­cused on.

Ram­per­sad not­ed that the TTPS did not pro­vide de­tails on what in­for­ma­tion it put be­fore the Jus­tice of the Peace to be grant­ed con­sec­u­tive search war­rants, each with wider scopes, on Thomas’s home and busi­ness.

“This fail­ure was again in breach of the du­ty to give full and frank dis­clo­sure and to be can­did with the court,” he had said.

And it was the TTPS’ treat­ment of Thomas up­on his re­turn from Bar­ba­dos— their war­rants which arose out of “mis­lead­ing” in­for­ma­tion which led the judge to stay all crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and find that his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights had been vi­o­lat­ed.

At no time in the court doc­u­ments did Thomas re­sist ar­rest dur­ing the process. In Ja­cob’s wit­ness state­ment, he was told that Thomas was will­ing to re­turn to T&T from Bar­ba­dos. Jus­tice Ram­per­sad not­ed that he even went will­ing­ly with the Bar­ba­dos Po­lice, even though he had not com­mit­ted a crime in that ju­ris­dic­tion.

Ram­per­sad said that ASP Birch, Supt Mar­tin, along with Cor­po­ral Joe­field, would have known when they flew out of Trinidad on Oc­to­ber 5, that they were go­ing to re­cov­er the first claimant, who was de­tained in Bar­ba­dos with­out any charges pend­ing against him there and with­out any of­fence hav­ing been com­mit­ted by him in Bar­ba­dos.

“To my mind, it is no de­fence to say that the un­law­ful­ness took place out­side of the ju­ris­dic­tion of T&T and the re­turn of the first claimant to Trinidad was mere hap­pen­stance. This was all by de­sign. A de­sign hatched in T&T, ex­e­cut­ed in Bar­ba­dos up­on the re­quest and di­rec­tion of the TTPS, fruc­ti­fied on the tar­mac of the Grant­ley Adams Air­port in Bar­ba­dos and fi­nalised up­on their re­turn to T&T,” the judge con­clud­ed.

What Ram­per­sad ac­cept­ed as “fact” was that Thomas was on bail fol­low­ing the Bar­ba­dos de­ba­cle, and an­oth­er search war­rant was ex­e­cut­ed on his prop­er­ty.

“ASP Birch said he made in­quiries of the mul­ti-op­er­a­tional po­lice sec­tion (MOPS) and the T&T De­fence Force and dis­cov­ered that they had not made any re­quest from the first claimant for any pro­hib­it­ed weapon since 2017. In­quiries of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­vealed no per­mis­sion had been giv­en to him to im­port pro­hib­it­ed weapons or ex­plo­sives so he formed the view that the cir­cum­stances in which the first claimant came in­to pos­ses­sion of the same, what he did with them or in­tend­ed to do them would be con­tained in doc­u­ments/files/da­ta/record­ings etc. at the sec­ond claimant’s premis­es. He there­fore went on to se­cure an­oth­er search war­rant dat­ed No­vem­ber 2, 2022,” the judge said.

Ram­per­sad said there is no dis­pute with re­spect to the un­law­ful in­ter­na­tion­al ab­duc­tion of the first claimant in Bar­ba­dos.

“This case in­volves so much more than just the de­ci­sion to is­sue six search war­rants. This in­volves a course of ac­tion run­ning over sev­er­al months, some with­in days of each oth­er, which touch up­on the ju­di­cial re­view ju­ris­dic­tion, no doubt, but which is un­der­lain with the thread of al­leged con­sti­tu­tion­al im­pro­pri­ety on be­half of the po­lice in their tone and con­duct of the mat­ter. There is noth­ing con­trived, friv­o­lous or vex­a­tious in the is­sues raised be­fore this court,” he said.

In all, Thomas and his le­gal team filed four af­fi­davits to sup­port his case- one on No­vem­ber 17, 2022, one of No­vem­ber 23, 2022, one on De­cem­ber 6, 2002 and an­oth­er on De­cem­ber 16, 2002.

The po­lice state­ments were lat­er, one by Sgt Matthew Hay­wood on De­cem­ber 12, 2002, and one by Supt Nigel Birch on De­cem­ber 23, 2002 and an­oth­er by Adana Hosan­na on De­cem­ber 23, 2002.

The last state­ment was by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Roger Gas­pard, filed on Jan­u­ary 6, 2023

Af­ter Ram­per­sad’s rul­ing, the State filed two ap­peals in the name of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and a sep­a­rate ap­peal by the DPP.

Dur­ing the Ju­ly 2025 hear­ing, Pe­ter Knox, KC, lead at­tor­ney for the State, con­ced­ed Thomas’s ar­rest in Bar­ba­dos was un­law­ful, ad­mit­ting the process should have fol­lowed ex­tra­di­tion pro­ce­dures. How­ev­er, he ar­gued the High Court went too far by stay­ing crim­i­nal charges, which in­clud­ed pos­ses­sion of pro­hib­it­ed weapons.

On Sep­tem­ber 16, 2025, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie opt­ed to dis­con­tin­ue the mat­ter and apol­o­gised to Thomas and said he would en­ter in­to good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions re­gard­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al dam­ages and costs both in the High Court and Court of Ap­peal.

De­spite the clo­sure of Thomas’ file by the TTPS, the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Philip and cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ued.

Last year, Phillip was grant­ed $65,000 bail on a charge of know­ing­ly and wil­ful­ly mak­ing a false state­ment re­lat­ing to a firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tion.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, 2025, Phillip ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter In­di­ra Chinebas af­ter he was charged by Hay­wood.

The po­lice case stat­ed that on Au­gust 28, 2021, he was ar­rest­ed for un­re­lat­ed of­fences, which re­main pend­ing.

How­ev­er, dur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, of­fi­cers in­spect­ed a firearm file and, when com­pared with a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence ap­pli­ca­tion, re­vealed con­flict­ing age in­for­ma­tion. The DPP gave po­lice in­struc­tions to for­mal­ly charge Phillip. The mat­ter is still be­fore the courts.

TTPS’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to FUL’s al­so led to eight po­lice of­fi­cers be­ing charged ear­li­er this year with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, aris­ing out of al­le­ga­tions that they con­spired to is­sue ap­proval let­ters to firearm hold­ers for the pur­chase of ad­di­tion­al rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, and have been com­mit­ted to stand tri­al.

The ac­cused are ASP Aaron Bed­doe, Sgt David Swan­son, Sgt Cindy Ann Chase, Sgt Lin­coln Bon­nett, act­ing Sgt Dey­na Gib­bons, Sgt Mervyn Roopc­hand, Cpl Mar­vin Di­az and PC Natasha Phillips-Paul.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the of­fi­cers were ini­tial­ly charged in Jan­u­ary 2023 af­ter be­ing de­tained by de­tec­tives from the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB).

TIME­LINE OD EVENTS

• Au­gust 28, 2021- Sgt Matthew Hay­wood ar­rest­ed a civil­ian, Ted­dy Philip and was en­gaged in in­ves­ti­ga­tions which in­volved firearms deal­er Brent Thomas.

• Au­gust 8, 2022- first search war­rant on Thomas’s busi­ness.

• Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022 - sec­ond search war­rant on Thomas’s busi­ness

• Sep­tem­ber 29, 2022 -third search war­rant ex­e­cut­ed on Thomas’s busi­ness and then on his pri­vate res­i­dence. Thomas was ar­rest­ed by po­lice and tak­en to the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion.

• Oc­to­ber 30, 2022- Thomas’s at­tor­ney De­vesh Ma­haraj files a habeas cor­pus

• Oc­to­ber 2, 2022- Court or­ders Thomas to be re­leased.

• On Oc­to­ber 3, 2022- Thomas trav­elled to Bar­ba­dos en route to the US for med­ical check-ups.

• On Oc­to­ber 3, 2022- Ja­cob said DCP Suzette Mar­tin con­tact­ed him and said Thomas had elud­ed sur­veil­lance and she had fur­ther in­for­ma­tion that “he in­tend­ed to flee the coun­try.” Mar­tin told Ja­cob that Thomas in­tend­ed to trav­el to Greece, a place where T&T had no ex­tra­di­tion treaty.

• On Oc­to­ber 5, 2022 Ja­cob held a meet­ing with Mar­tin as well as George Laldeo, head of the Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime Unit (TOCU). Ja­cob was told that Thomas was al­ready in Bar­ba­dos and had vol­un­teered to re­turn to Trinidad, thus negat­ing the pro­ce­dure un­der the Process of Ex­tra­di­tion. He was al­so told that arrange­ments had been made through the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty with the Joint Re­gion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Cen­tre (JR­CC) and Cari­com Im­pacs to fa­cil­i­tate his re­turn.

• The TTPS se­cured war­rants, though the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for Thomas’ ar­rest dat­ed Oc­to­ber 3. Ja­cob signed off doc­u­ments to al­low Laldeo, Mar­tin, ASP Nigel Brich, and Cor­po­ral Joe­field to leave the coun­try for the sole pur­pose of the re­turn of Thomas on the grounds that the TTPS had six war­rants for his ar­rest, cou­pled with the fact of his will­ing­ness to re­turn to Trinidad. Ja­cob said they were to trav­el to Bar­ba­dos on the RSS plane and would not ex­it, in­stead, they would col­lect Thomas on the tar­mac of the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

• On Oc­to­ber 5, 2022 -Thomas was tak­en from his ho­tel by mem­bers of the Roy­al Bar­ba­dos Po­lice Force to the air­port.

• On Oc­to­ber 6, 2022- Mar­tin sub­mit­ted a re­port on the mat­ter with ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Thomas was tak­en to court.

• On Oc­to­ber 7, 2022- Thomas was grant­ed bail.

• On Oc­to­ber 10, 2022- Bail terms vary and placed on cur­few from 6 am to 9 pm dai­ly.

• No­vem­ber 2022- More po­lice search­es. Thomas files case against the state.

• On April 25, 2023, Thomas scored a con­sti­tu­tion­al vic­to­ry in the coun­try’s courts against the State (un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion) over what High Court judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad, said was his ab­duc­tion in Bar­ba­dos and rul­ing that the de­ten­tion and re­moval amount­ed to an abuse of process.

• On Sep­tem­ber 16, 2025, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie opt­ed to dis­con­tin­ue the mat­ter and apol­o­gised to Thomas and said he would en­ter in­to good faith ne­go­ti­a­tions re­gard­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al dam­ages and costs both in the High Court and Court of Ap­peal.

• Feb­ru­ary 2026, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 50th Cari­com Sum­mit in St Kitts and Nevis.

de­scribed the in­ci­dent when Thomas was de­tained in Bar­ba­dos and re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go aboard a mil­i­tary air­craft as a “kid­nap­ping.

• Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley re­ject­ed the use of the term “kid­nap­ping,” call­ing it “a scur­rilous lie and defam­a­to­ry in the ex­treme.”

Mot­t­ley told the me­dia that of­fi­cial records show that Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice pre­sent­ed ar­rest war­rants to their Bar­ba­di­an coun­ter­parts, who act­ed on them, mak­ing it in­ac­cu­rate to por­tray the mat­ter as a uni­lat­er­al ab­duc­tion by Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had coun­tered that she did not sin­gle out Bar­ba­dos for blame but stood firm in her state­ment, say­ing it fol­lowed what the High Court ruled on the mat­ter.

• On Feb­ru­ary 27, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Cab­i­net would con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Thomas af­fair, but the po­ten­tial cost of such an ex­er­cise will be a key fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing whether it in fact pro­ceeds.

• Feb­ru­ary 28 Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon told Guardian Me­dia that the po­lice probe in­to con­duct by its of­fi­cers was still on.