Suspended police officer held over kidnapping allegations

A sus­pend­ed Po­lice Con­sta­ble has been ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with al­le­ga­tions of kid­nap­ping and sex­u­al of­fences in­volv­ing a 20-year-old woman, fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease, the in­ci­dent re­port­ed­ly oc­curred on June 3.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the woman re­port­ed that she was forcibly re­moved from a ve­hi­cle by a man who iden­ti­fied him­self as a po­lice of­fi­cer and dis­played what ap­peared to be a TTPS iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge.

The woman al­leged that she was then tak­en to an undis­closed lo­ca­tion where she was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed.

A re­port was sub­se­quent­ly made to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion, prompt­ing the launch of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The TTPS con­firmed that one sus­pect, a 39-year-old of­fi­cer who is cur­rent­ly un­der sus­pen­sion from the ser­vice, was ar­rest­ed on June 20 un­der the au­thor­i­ty of a sev­en-day de­ten­tion or­der.

Po­lice said the sus­pect is ex­pect­ed to be charged with Griev­ous Sex­u­al As­sault, At­tempt­ed Griev­ous Sex­u­al As­sault, Se­ri­ous In­de­cen­cy and Kid­nap­ping.

The de­ci­sion to pro­ceed with charges fol­lows le­gal ad­vice from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard SC.

The ac­cused is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Mas­ter of the High Court this week.

The TTPS said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions) Suzette Mar­tin and Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rudolph Bhag­wan­deen. Op­er­a­tional su­per­vi­sion was pro­vid­ed by Act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Mark Her­nan­dez.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ex­e­cut­ed by In­spec­tor Ram­per­sad and Woman Cor­po­ral Mo­han, with as­sis­tance from Po­lice Con­sta­bles Leesh­en Ho­sein, Toolaram, Chap­man, Ram­per­sad and Har­ri­paul.

In its state­ment, the TTPS re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to in­ves­ti­gat­ing all al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal con­duct thor­ough­ly and im­par­tial­ly, re­gard­less of a per­son’s po­si­tion or oc­cu­pa­tion.

The ser­vice added that no in­di­vid­ual is above the law and said crim­i­nal charges would be pur­sued where suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence ex­ists.

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