Police constable charged after allegedly transporting gang member

Derek Achong

A po­lice con­sta­ble has been charged for al­leged­ly trans­port­ing a pur­port­ed gang mem­ber af­ter he was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal last week.

PC Kee­gan Gar­cia was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice on Mon­day, al­most 12 hours af­ter Jus­tice Karen Reid di­rect­ed that he be placed on “pre-charge” bail pend­ing the com­ple­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to him.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) stat­ed that Jus­tice Reid’s de­ci­sion was ap­pealed and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) then ad­vised that he should be charged.

Gar­cia was sub­se­quent­ly grant­ed bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace (JP).

Gar­cia, who was last as­signed to the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, was ar­rest­ed by col­leagues last Thurs­day.

He was told that he was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for fa­cil­i­tat­ing the es­cape of al­leged gang mem­ber and for­mer mur­der ac­cused Ja­mal “Fishie” Bartholomew, from Mor­vant, who was ward­ed at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing wound­ed in a shoot­ing in late Ju­ly.

The of­fi­cer was ac­cused of dri­ving Bartholomew from the hos­pi­tal in a po­lice ve­hi­cle af­ter he (the gang mem­ber) dis­charged him­self in the com­pa­ny of his lawyer, hours be­fore his (the of­fi­cer’s) even­tu­al ar­rest.

His lawyer, Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­ris X Cham­bers, filed the case af­ter he was de­tained for sev­er­al days with­out be­ing charged and was told that in­ves­ti­ga­tors were seek­ing CCTV footage to com­plete their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“No time­line has been pro­vid­ed for the con­clu­sion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The po­lice of­fi­cers have failed to in­di­cate when a de­ci­sion will be tak­en to charge and/or re­lease the Ap­pli­cant,” Ramkhal­whan said in the court fil­ings.

Ramkhal­whan stat­ed that his client de­nied the al­le­ga­tion that he helped re­move a per­son who was un­der ar­rest and in po­lice cus­tody.

Re­fer­ring to so­cial me­dia re­ports in­di­cat­ing that Bartholomew was not un­der ar­rest or po­lice guard at the hos­pi­tal at the time, Ramkhal­whan said: “The Re­spon­dent has failed to pro­vide any of the doc­u­ments and/or in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed con­cern­ing whether (name with­held) was un­der ar­rest and in po­lice cus­tody at the ma­te­r­i­al time.”

He claimed that the of­fi­cer was en­ti­tled to pre-charge bail, which is pro­vid­ed for un­der Sec­tion 3 of the Bail Act but is rarely in­voked.

“In the cir­cum­stances of this case, bail ought to have been grant­ed to the Ap­pli­cant by a po­lice of­fi­cer with the con­di­tion that the Ap­pli­cant re­turn at a spec­i­fied date and time to the po­lice sta­tion for any in­ves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure, that is, the re­sumed in­ter­view and/or the pre­sen­ta­tion of the CCTV footage,” he said.

In an af­fi­davit in re­sponse to the law­suit, In­spec­tor Dar­ren Lib­ert claimed that Bartholomew was de­tained un­der Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions for the re­cent­ly end­ed State of Emer­gency (SoE) af­ter be­ing wound­ed.

Lib­ert claimed that his de­ten­tion was ex­tend­ed for sev­en days un­der the reg­u­la­tions on Au­gust 28.

He al­so re­ferred to a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) against Bartholomew, which was is­sued by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der on Au­gust 18.

“How­ev­er, due to his in­juries, the said PDO was not ex­e­cut­ed on him as the of­fi­cers were await­ing his re­cov­ery from these in­juries,” Lib­ert said.

Lib­ert claimed that he and oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tors were work­ing to com­plete a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion but were de­railed by the le­gal ac­tion.

“The Ap­pli­cant’s ap­pli­ca­tion on­ly served to stymie the in­ves­tiga­tive process as re­sources had to be redi­rect­ed to ad­dress the al­le­ga­tions con­tained in what can be deemed as a vex­a­tious ap­pli­ca­tion, rather than fo­cus­ing on ex­pe­di­tious­ly com­plet­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Lib­ert said.

“I ver­i­ly be­lieve that we act­ed in good faith through­out the en­tire process and our ac­tions have been rea­son­able and jus­ti­fied,” he added.

Af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from Ramkhal­whan and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Jus­tice Reid up­held the ap­pli­ca­tion.

The TTPS was rep­re­sent­ed by Anya Ra­mute Mo­han and Adana Walk­er-Ram­sar­ran.