The legal doctrine that empowers the police to arrest without a warrant is encoded in the criminal act of Trinidad and Tobago by statute. The act states; where a police officer, with reasonable cause suspects that an arrestable offence has been committed, he may arrest without warrant anyone whom he, with reasonable cause suspects to be guilty of the offence. This is a singular and most important piece of legislation, for it endows our police force not only with the authority, but also the physical ability to maintain law and order with the urgent dispatch that is oftentimes necessary when it becomes functionally impossible to first seek the issuance of a warrant to execute an arrest. This law is one of the fundamental legal pillars of any democratic society for without it the day to day operational processes of our police service would simply cease to exist, and our society would be plunged into chaos.
Incredible as it may seem this is also the legal statute to which our commissioner of police is now claiming complete and total ignorance. He would have us believe that not once in more than over forty years of police service has he ever been made privy to the existence of such a statute, neither has he ever arrested anyone without a warrant, based solely on reasonable cause. He also is not aware of any other police officer who has ever done this and thus cannot sanction his officers to now do so at the Guanapo church site. He would also have us believe even though he holds a criminal law degree, even with this; he still remains blissfully oblivious of the existence of this statute. As hard as I try I cannot be kind about this, I simply can’t. Are you fucking kidding me?
The truth is anyone and everyone who attempted to sprit away material from the Guanapo church site could have, and should have been arrested for the summary offence of illegal possession of such building material unless, and until they could provide proof that they were acting as agents for, and with the full consent, and knowledge of the owner. I am also hard pressed to believe that not one member of the congregation from the lighthouse of our lord Jesus Christ not even Patrick Manning knowing full well that someone other than their pastor was constructing a church on lands granted to them by the government for this very purpose has not stepped forward to provide the commissioner with the information he needs to identify who owns the building that is being constructed, neither have they gone to court to legally settle this issue. Surely one has to believe that a congregation with such religious passion as to solicit the government for lands upon which to build a church would not now stand idly by, and watch as others turn their more than five year long dream into ashes and dust, by making off with the very building materials they have labored for so long and so hard to obtain for the construction of just such a church.
There is a much bigger picture here of course and that is the ongoing criminal investigation into the indictable offence of misappropriation of public funds. It appears to be in both the lighthouse of our lord Jesus Christ followers’ interest, and the commissioner’s personal interest as well to prevent the identity of the owner of the building under construction at Guanapo from being revealed to the general public.
Misappropriation is the intentional illegal use of the property or funds of another person for one’s own use or other unauthorized purpose particularly by a public official. It is an indictable offence and punishable by a prison sentence. To review the facts so far; it has been alleged and there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest, that funds earmarked to erect a building at the prime minister’s residence were redirected without proper authority, and said building is now being constructed at Guanapo. These findings have launched two investigations, one by the integrity commission, and the other a criminal investigation by the police.
It is important here I think to make a clear distinction. It is quite legal for the government through one of its ministries or offices to fund the construction of a religious building, once the funds were legally appropriated within the parliamentary system to do so. It is another thing entirely for individual employees within a government ministry or office, up to and even including the person of prime minister to act in their narrow self interest only and therefore attempt to usurp the democratic authority of the parliamentary system, by illegally diverting the funds in the public purse from its designated expenditure to meet or fulfill their private needs, or to dispose of these funds on projects they personally deem to be more worthy.
At the very least the commissioner of police should have instructed the unit in charge of the investigation to seek a court order declaring the Guanapo church site a crime scene wherein there is the potential for the recovery of evidence, and as such must be protected from interference of any kind, access to the site should not be granted to anyone other than the investigators. This would have insured a police presence at the site with the authority to stop the indiscriminate removal of building material. Instead what we have seen is the commissioner of police doing his best to obstruct justice by first not protecting a crime scene, and then allowing the removal of potential evidence from that scene even after being repeatedly asked by no less a person than the attorney general to secure the site. When in utter frustration the attorney general raises his voice in open anger at the unresponsive and clearly incompetent commissioner, people actually came running to his defense. Really??? What the hell can they be thinking? I can only wonder as to what exactly would make these people so delusional that they would support the commissioner of police while he is actively engaged in the blatant obstruction of justice in an ongoing criminal investigation.
To see just how much the commissioner has obstructed the advancement of the criminal investigation one just has to read his only public statement on the matter. He claimed that the Guanapo site had been abandoned, but this clearly is not true. What we do know is the contractor has quit the site for nonpayment, but the contractor is not the owner. A contractor quitting a site cannot legally constitute abandonment of the property by the owner, and it most certainly does not rescind the authority of the police in their duty to protect the owner’s rights against vandalism, or other such crimes against personal property. If this were the case then the government office building at Chancery lane San Fernando which has been without a contractor for some time can be indiscriminately looted without the fear of police intervention, but no one really believes they can do that, do they.
So this begs the obvious question how does he know that the owner has really abandoned the site, when in the same statement he declares that the police does not know who owns the property. The far more disturbing and alarming thing is at every turn he has failed to follow up, or act upon information that would lead to the discovery of the name of the owner. He has failed to obtain a court subpoena for the contractor to turn over the building contract. This document would not only contain the name of the owner but also the owner’s address along with the names of all other interested parties, even quite possibly the name of the company responsible for the project financing.
One would have thought that any financial corporation faced with the imminent lose of a thirty million dollar building loan fully convertible into a thirty year mortgage worth over ninety million dollars would be screaming to have the site secured, and the missing owner found, drawn, and quartered. It is unthinkable in this day and age to actually believe that anyone would self finance a thirty million dollar building project. Then again maybe I am the naive one, and there are actually pastors in Trinidad and Tobago who are so wealthy and filled with such religious fervor and morality they can just simply walk away from thirty million dollars. The very fact that not a single financial institution has come forward so far in an attempt to mitigate their mounting losses by claiming a contractual right to the property for nonpayment of the outstanding construction debt incurred by the owner just smacks of the crime of Misappropriation.
As far as anyone knows the commissioner has failed to instruct his officers to attempt to find the name of the owner by searching the records of the Piarco Municipal Corporation as they had to issue the building permit for the church. He has failed to instruct his officers to inquire at the ministry of legal affairs where the church had to registered as a not for profit organization. He has failed to instruct his officers to contact the staff at the church’s current office as they would know who was constructing a building on their land.
The one question I want to ask is why, why would James Philbert our acting commissioner of police who has sworn an oath to bring all criminals to swift and speedy justice consciously and methodically impede and frustrate the quick resolution of this investigation?
