An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney and for­mer T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, re­tired Cpl Dr Wayne “Watch­man” Hayde, has come out in de­fence of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, say­ing she is now the vic­tim of a “hatch­et job.”

His com­ments fol­lowed al­le­ga­tions against Mar­tin re­gard­ing her han­dling of pre­vi­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions, which he and oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials yes­ter­day claimed were in­tend­ed to ma­lign her char­ac­ter and dis­cred­it her pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

Hayde, who cur­rent­ly lives in Ugan­da, had sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion for the post of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) in 2017 but was re­ject­ed by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC).

In an 11-minute record­ing cir­cu­lat­ed via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Hayde weighed in on the de­vel­op­ment that sur­faced on the week­end, in which Mar­tin was ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to per­vert the course of jus­tice in 2023.

In Hayde’s record­ing, he ques­tioned the tim­ing of the two-year-old re­port, as he said, “What is in­ter­est­ing is that the cher­ry-picked parts of his re­port that ap­pears in the news­pa­per (name called), does not ad­dress the core is­sue as to whether there was ev­i­dence that Ms Mar­tin com­mit­ted any crime.”

Af­ter pe­rus­ing the re­port dat­ed Ju­ly 5, 2023, Hayde said the com­plainant had failed to bring the ev­i­dence that would prove Mar­tin had erred in her du­ty.

He said, “All I saw was sup­po­si­tions, pre­sump­tions, as­sump­tions, con­clu­sions, spec­u­la­tion, about the ac­tions and mo­tives of sev­er­al peo­ple but is not sup­port­ed by any ev­i­dence.”

Claim­ing the doc­u­ment had read like the “Chron­i­cles of a bush lawyer,” Hayde was crit­i­cal of the re­port, which he said showed that Sgt Sean Hay­wood had re­fused to fol­low the le­gal ad­vice giv­en by se­nior of­fi­cers and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, which was akin to de­lib­er­ate dis­re­spect and dis­obe­di­ence.

Hayde, who said he did not know Mar­tin per­son­al­ly, con­clud­ed, “Some­body is wield­ing a hatch­et and that per­son may be stand­ing be­hind the re­porter (name called) ... who should now have to ex­plain, maybe to the court when they are sued.”

Mar­tin was ac­cused of mis­han­dling two firearms-re­lat­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions by Sgt Hay­wood when she was head of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB). How­ev­er, si­mul­ta­ne­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) al­leged­ly found no ev­i­dence had been prof­fered which would have re­sult­ed in charges be­ing brought against Mar­tin.

Hay­wood is now an in­spec­tor.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed by a se­nior of­fi­cer yes­ter­day that the PCA’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been closed, whilst the act­ing DCP, Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon, on Mon­day ex­plained that the in­ves­ti­ga­tor had been ad­vised to seek fur­ther ev­i­dence at the time. Si­mon said since that time to now, no fur­ther ac­tion had been tak­en in the mat­ter, which re­mained as is.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on if they re­ceived a re­port from Hay­wood and if the PCA had car­ried out its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion, PCA di­rec­tor David West said, “We do not deal on­ly with fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings. We look in­to any crim­i­nal of­fence, po­lice cor­rup­tion and se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct.”

He, how­ev­er, re­fused to di­vulge any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

While calls to Mar­tin went unan­swered, sources close to her said the DCP was con­strained in her abil­i­ty to re­spond to ques­tions.

Ques­tion­ing the tim­ing of the re­port over the week­end, one fe­male of­fi­cer de­fend­ed Mar­tin against what she de­scribed as “in­ten­tion­al pub­lic mis­chief.”

She dis­missed the me­dia re­ports as she claimed, “Fur­ther checks re­vealed those al­le­ga­tions were er­ro­neous and it is just in­tend­ed to ma­lign her char­ac­ter.”

The of­fi­cer in­sist­ed the re­port was in­tend­ed to di­vert at­ten­tion away from the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher—which is be­ing led by Mar­tin.

“There are two per­sons un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion and I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate it.”