No charges yet for WPC ‘robbed’ of over $.1M

An­na-Lisa Paul

In­ves­ti­ga­tors prob­ing the al­leged rob­bery of over $127,000 from a fe­male po­lice con­sta­ble at­tached to the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion have sought ad­vice from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) re­gard­ing charges to be laid against her and four ac­com­plices, in­clud­ing a close male rel­a­tive.

Guardian Me­dia learned the WPC and the four men from west Trinidad re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to yes­ter­day, while the search con­tin­ued for the fe­male sus­pect who was orig­i­nal­ly be­lieved to have stolen the cash from the of­fi­cer.

The WPC was ar­rest­ed on Oc­to­ber 1, af­ter she re­port­ed be­ing robbed dur­ing an un­sched­uled vis­it to the Trea­sury, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

The four men were ar­rest­ed on the week­end af­ter they were found with cash and two gov­ern­ment vouch­ers, which had been pre­pared in the amounts of $55,050 and $72,600.

The vouch­ers, which were signed by the WPC, al­so bore the stamp of the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

Guardian Me­dia was told one man had been found with less than $5,000 in cash, be­lieved to be part of the stolen funds.

The of­fi­cer, who was at­tached to the Of­fice of the In­spec­tor at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, claimed she was robbed of cash as she walked along In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

The mis­cel­la­neous cash was said to be fees col­lect­ed at the sta­tion over sev­er­al months as the pub­lic 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.

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 her.

The sus­pect was seen smil­ing broad­ly be­fore run­ning off.

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

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 the same day.

It al­so trig­gered the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to is­sue re­vised Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dures for all po­lice sta­tions, specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing how clerks are to op­er­ate.