Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

More than a month af­ter the shock­ing mur­der of act­ing cor­po­ral Anus­ka Ever­s­ley and the theft of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion from the San Fer­nan­do Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion, an in­ter­faith ser­vice was held at the sta­tion yes­ter­day as col­leagues con­tin­ue to re­cov­er from the tragedy.

Staff and se­nior of­fi­cers of the T&T Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS), San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion gath­ered for the prayer ser­vice and bless­ing of the new­ly re­fur­bished sta­tion at Kings Wharf.

Of­fi­cials said the event sym­bol­ised re­new­al, heal­ing and re­cov­ery fol­low­ing the trau­mat­ic in­ci­dent that shook the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice ser­vice and the wider com­mu­ni­ty.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Mo­hammed, who as­sumed com­mand af­ter the pre­vi­ous se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent was sus­pend­ed pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent, said he was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing of­fi­cers car­ried out their du­ties re­spon­si­bly.

He said one of the is­sues he in­tend­ed to ad­dress was the prac­tice of of­fi­cers re­main­ing on con­tin­u­ous sick leave for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods while con­tin­u­ing to re­ceive salaries.

“I want to see how best I can work with the May­or, the CEO and the PRO of the cor­po­ra­tion to en­sure that we do some­thing le­git­i­mate­ly to avoid any re­oc­cur­rence of those of­fi­cers ob­tain­ing salary and not work­ing,” Mo­hammed said.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the ero­sion of pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Mo­hammed as­sured that mea­sures were be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent a re­cur­rence.

Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice ACP Wayne Mys­tar said the bless­ing of the sta­tion was in­tend­ed to re­store morale and sup­port the heal­ing process for of­fi­cers still cop­ing with the trau­ma.

He said psy­choso­cial sup­port con­tin­ued to be pro­vid­ed, with some of­fi­cers still un­der­go­ing coun­selling, while ren­o­va­tions and oth­er im­prove­ments re­mained on­go­ing at the sta­tion.

“Thus far, we are see­ing that there’s a resur­gence. The mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers, you know, they are ready. They are do­ing great ac­tiv­i­ties in terms of get­ting them­selves back to their nor­mal du­ties and I’m hap­py to see that,” Mys­tar said.

Pledg­ing con­tin­ued sup­port, May­or Par­ris said he had been meet­ing with mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to dis­cuss ways they could as­sist the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice ser­vice and help as­sess the needs of the city.

“We al­so dis­cussed how we can ex­pand the op­er­a­tions by of­fer­ing some of our as­sets to as­sist the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice in mov­ing for­ward,” he said.

Singh said he be­lieved the sta­tion bless­ing would help rein­vig­o­rate the morale of po­lice of­fi­cers.

“We ex­pect that the con­fi­dence of the po­lice will re­turn over time as we progress through 2026 to re­cov­er from this,” he said.

While not­ing that San Fer­nan­do re­mains rel­a­tive­ly safe, Singh said he was en­cour­aged by plans to in­ves­ti­gate of­fi­cers who ap­peared not to be car­ry­ing their weight.

He al­so called for in­creased po­lice pa­trols through­out down­town San Fer­nan­do, in­clud­ing dur­ing off-peak hours.

Singh said he had spo­ken with Mys­tar about ar­rang­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss new ini­tia­tives, roles and ob­jec­tives for the po­lice ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to San Fer­nan­do.

Ever­s­ley was found mur­dered in­side the po­lice sta­tion on April 19, and a large quan­ti­ty of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion was dis­cov­ered miss­ing.

Po­lice have since re­cov­ered 44 firearms and more than 900 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

On April 28, three men — Ever­s­ley’s col­league, Con­sta­ble Ji­van “Big­gs” Coop­er, Kwame Arnold, 20, and Nicholas “Nico” Ram­dass, all of Clax­ton Bay — ap­peared be­fore the court charged with four of­fences, in­clud­ing mur­der, pos­ses­sion of firearms, pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion and rob­bing Ever­s­ley.

Po­lice have al­so launched an in­ter­na­tion­al man­hunt for a fourth sus­pect.