The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) wishes to state that the TTPS was always ready to proceed with the case against 12 persons for the alleged breach of the Public Health Ordinance regulations at Alicia’s Guest House on April 10th, 2020.
When the case was last called on November 2nd, 2020, the complainant and witnesses were present, and like the defense, they too were ready to proceed with the trial as ordered by the presiding Magistrate on a previous occasion. In light of the “public interest” of this case, the police prosecutor recommended to the Magistrate that this file should be forwarded to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) which would then have conduct of this matter.
But despite the request, the matter ended and the cases against the 12 accused were dismissed.
Commissioner of Police, Gary Griffith, said the TTPS has appealed the matter.
The CoP also referred to an editorial in the Trinidad Express today, headlined “Probe this Police Failure”. He said once again, the Express and its editor-in-chief, Omatie Lyder, have shown that without proper investigations, they have gone and blamed the Commissioner of Police for this incident.
Commissioner Griffith said no reference was made in the editorial that there has been a 97 percent improvement in the attendance of complainants in court in 2020 compared with the same period in 2019.
He said the Express was not interested in these statistics, but rather poured blame on the Commissioner of Police for the collapse of one (1) case, which if the newspaper had properly investigated, would have found that it was not the fault of the TTPS. The only failure was poor investigations by the Trinidad Express due to their zeal to have unwarranted attacks perpetuated on the TTPS again!
The CoP had asked for a report after the cases were dismissed on Monday November 2nd.
He said after perusing it, a decision was made to file an appeal as he does not believe that the interest of justice was served in this case.
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