Officer charged after missing police firearm recovered

A 23-year-old po­lice of­fi­cer is due to ap­pear be­fore the court on Mon­day charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice af­ter a po­lice-is­sued firearm, mag­a­zine and am­mu­ni­tion were re­port­ed miss­ing from the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said the weapon was dis­cov­ered miss­ing dur­ing in­ter­nal checks at the sta­tion on Ju­ly 29. An in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched im­me­di­ate­ly, lead­ing to the re­cov­ery of the firearm, mag­a­zine and am­mu­ni­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the firearm was re­turned to the sta­tion be­fore it was re­cov­ered by in­ves­ti­ga­tors. Sources said of­fi­cers from the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau vis­it­ed the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, seiz­ing sta­tion records and in­ter­view­ing of­fi­cers.

The of­fi­cer, of Seav­iew Lane, Ma­yaro, who has nine months’ ser­vice, was de­tained be­fore be­ing charged fol­low­ing ad­vice from As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions An­ju Bho­la. The charge was laid by Ag Sgt De­noon.

He is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the court on Mon­day.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the TTPS main­tains “an un­com­pro­mis­ing po­si­tion on in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

“Any breach of trust, es­pe­cial­ly in­volv­ing the han­dling of po­lice firearms, will be met with ze­ro tol­er­ance. We will con­tin­ue to act de­ci­sive­ly to pro­tect the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the Ser­vice,” Gue­var­ro said.