Jensen La Vende 

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin yes­ter­day met with some 100 po­lice of­fi­cers who were af­fect­ed by the judg­ment against the pro­mo­tion­al process for in­spec­tors to as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dents.

Some 169 of­fi­cers were im­pact­ed by the rul­ing hand­ed down by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad.

On Tues­day, Seep­er­sad quashed the process as he up­held a law­suit brought by In­sp Mark Her­nan­dez, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise last year.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that sus­pend­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Odyssey Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed, the con­sul­tan­cy firm hired to as­sist with the process, made mis­steps at every stage of the three-tiered pro­mo­tion process.

He ruled there were mul­ti­ple breach­es of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act and as­so­ci­at­ed reg­u­la­tions, which meant the process had to start all over again.

Ben­jamin met with the of­fi­cers at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James, and while no con­sen­sus was ar­rived at on whether to ap­peal the de­ci­sion or not, he was able to gauge the feel­ings of the af­fect­ed of­fi­cers.

“It was just to re­al­ly have an idea and to re­al­ly feel what is hap­pen­ing or how peo­ple felt. And it was a form of heal­ing at the same time. So we were able to talk about the is­sue and re­al­ly hear dif­fer­ent op­tions, and again, it will aid in guid­ing go­ing for­ward,” he said.

Asked about the im­pact the judg­ment may have on oth­er sim­i­lar pend­ing court mat­ters and the pro­mo­tion of oth­er of­fi­cers at yes­ter­day’s TTPS me­dia brief­ing, Ben­jamin said the mat­ter was be­ing looked at holis­ti­cal­ly.

The act­ing top cop said he was not look­ing at in­di­vid­u­als but the or­gan­i­sa­tion as a whole and would make a de­ci­sion to ben­e­fit the en­tire po­lice ser­vice.

Al­so at the me­dia brief­ing were ACP Richard Smith and act­ing DCP Curt Si­mon, both of whom were re­cent­ly pro­mot­ed to ACP.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing oth­er af­fect­ed po­lice of­fi­cers who sim­i­lar­ly are chal­leng­ing the pro­mo­tion of of­fi­cers from the ranks of su­per­in­ten­dent to ACP, say Seep­er­sad’s judg­ment would have a rip­ple ef­fect.

The at­tor­neys, who asked not to be named as the mat­ter was sub ju­dice, said if the process for all the ranks was made to restart, that may be chaot­ic for the po­lice ser­vice.

Asked about this, Ben­jamin said there were prece­dents in place to ad­dress that, and he did not want to speak in a blan­ket way on the mat­ter.

“I think we can be a bit pre­ma­ture in tak­ing this judge­ment way be­yond what was said and the con­text in which it was said. Nev­er­the­less, the po­lice ser­vice will con­tin­ue to make de­ci­sions in the best in­ter­est of the or­gan­i­sa­tion as a whole. We are not go­ing to look at the whole sit­u­a­tion as ranks be­ing tak­en away and that kind of stuff be­cause, again, I think we have enough prece­dence to deal with those mat­ters.”

Both Smith and Si­mon said they were not con­cerned about their pro­mo­tion be­ing sub­ject to a court or­der restart.

Smith said he was not per­son­al­ly con­cerned as he await­ed the out­come of the court mat­ters that in­volve his rank, adding that Seep­er­sad is on­ly one judge while oth­er judges may rule dif­fer­ent­ly.

Si­mon added that there was no prece­dent for de­mot­ing an of­fi­cer, even af­ter the court found that there were ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the process, but ad­mit­ted that fix­ing the prob­lem would be a tall or­der.