Police Constable granted bail after evidence tampering charge

Po­lice Con­sta­ble Ste­fon Khan has been grant­ed bail with sure­ty in the sum of $350,000 af­ter be­ing charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. The charge fol­lowed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the tam­per­ing and theft of po­lice ex­hibits.

Khan ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mas­ter Rhea Lib­ert at the Ch­agua­nas Mas­ters Court on May 7. Bail con­di­tions re­quire him to re­side at his home, avoid con­tact with wit­ness­es, and ob­tain court ap­proval be­fore leav­ing the coun­try. A sta­tus hear­ing has been set for Ju­ly 10. He re­mains in cus­tody at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Recre­ation­al Fa­cil­i­ty un­til the ex­pi­ra­tion of the cur­rent state of emer­gency.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gan af­ter a fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion on Feb­ru­ary 24. A Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tor col­lect­ed ex­hibits in­clud­ing a firearm, am­mu­ni­tion, and two blocks of cannabis weigh­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.2 kilo­grams. These were sealed and stored in the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion stron­groom.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, the in­ves­ti­ga­tor dis­cov­ered that the ev­i­dence bag seal had been bro­ken. The cannabis blocks had been re­placed with tam­pered pack­ages con­tain­ing wood and a ce­ram­ic tile. CCTV footage iden­ti­fied Con­sta­ble Khan re­mov­ing the ex­hibits and re­plac­ing them with al­tered pack­ages.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers co­or­di­nat­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which led to Con­sta­ble Khan’s ar­rest un­der a Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der. The Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard SC, ad­vised that Khan be charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice for lar­ce­ny of ex­hibits val­ued at $242,000.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice stat­ed that all of­fi­cers are held to the high­est stan­dards of in­tegri­ty. The Ser­vice em­pha­sized that mis­con­duct in­volv­ing po­lice ex­hibits will not be tol­er­at­ed and reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and the pur­suit of jus­tice.

The mat­ter will re­turn to court in Ju­ly for a sta­tus up­date.