SRP officer charged with forgery and misbehaviour

A Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer has been grant­ed bail af­ter be­ing charged with forgery and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

WPC Lau­ren Thomas, last at­tached to the North­ern Di­vi­sion-North, was brought be­fore a Jus­tice of the Peace on al­le­ga­tions that she sub­mit­ted forged aca­d­e­m­ic cer­tifi­cates in an at­tempt to join the ranks of the Reg­u­lar Po­lice Ser­vice.

She was grant­ed bail in the sum of $200,000 with sure­ty and is sched­uled to ap­pear be­fore the Port of Spain North Crim­i­nal Court on June 10, 2026.

Thomas faces two charges: ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment con­trary to Sec­tion 9 (1) of the Forgery Act Chap­ter 11:13, and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice con­trary to com­mon law. The charges stem from a re­port re­ceived by the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) on March 15, 2026. Ac­cord­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tors, Thomas al­leged­ly sub­mit­ted a doc­u­ment bun­dle to the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St. James as part of the ab­sorp­tion process to be­come a Reg­u­lar Po­lice Of­fi­cer.

Checks re­vealed that the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) cer­tifi­cates in­clud­ed in the sub­mis­sion were in­valid. This dis­cov­ery prompt­ed a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion co­or­di­nat­ed by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Natasha George, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er Richard Smith, and Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Lin­don Dou­glas. The in­quiry was su­per­vised by Act­ing Woman Su­per­in­ten­dent Bac­chus, Cor­po­ral Jones, and oth­er PSB of­fi­cers.

On June 1, 2026, Thomas was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter. Fol­low­ing ad­vice from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard SC, Cor­po­ral Jones for­mal­ly laid the charges.

The case high­lights the vig­i­lance of the PSB in safe­guard­ing the in­tegri­ty of the po­lice ser­vice. In­ves­ti­ga­tors em­pha­sized that the sub­mis­sion of fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments un­der­mines pub­lic trust and com­pro­mis­es the stan­dards ex­pect­ed of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

Thomas’s court ap­pear­ance lat­er this week will de­ter­mine the next stage of pro­ceed­ings. The mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to draw close at­ten­tion as it in­volves al­le­ga­tions of dis­hon­esty with­in the ranks of the po­lice ser­vice.