Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 40-year-old Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cer has been grant­ed $150,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court along­side a col­league for al­leged­ly steal­ing $14,000 in pow­er tools from a stolen ve­hi­cle they re­cov­ered. 

Christo­pher Gob­in re­ceived bail as he and his col­league Car­los Thorne made their first court ap­pear­ance be­fore High Court Mas­ter In­di­ra Chinebas, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

The duo were joint­ly charged with mis­be­hav­ing in pub­lic of­fice fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent last month. 

On No­vem­ber 8, a man made a re­port to po­lice that his pan­el van, con­tain­ing the tools, was stolen while he was pur­chas­ing food at En­deav­our Road, Ch­agua­nas. 

Around 12.30 am the fol­low­ing day, the ve­hi­cle was found aban­doned in Carlsen Field by the duo, who arranged for it to be wrecked to the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion. 

When the own­er came to the sta­tion to iden­ti­fy the ve­hi­cle, he in­formed of­fi­cers that his tools and the af­ter­mar­ket au­dio sys­tem in his ve­hi­cle were miss­ing. 

The duo were de­tained af­ter most of the miss­ing items were re­cov­ered along Con­nec­tor Road in Ch­agua­nas. 

Dur­ing the court hear­ing, Gob­in’s lawyers Shi­va Boodoo and Rosh­ni Balka­ran-Boodoo, ap­plied for rea­son­able bail for Gob­in. 

They not­ed that the fa­ther of one had served as an SRP for two years be­fore be­ing ac­cused of the crime. 

As part of his bail con­di­tions, Gob­in was or­dered not to con­tact the al­leged vic­tim in the case. 

Guardian Me­dia could not con­firm whether Thorne had been grant­ed bail. 

The of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to court on De­cem­ber 16, when Mas­ter Chinebas is ex­pect­ed to set dates for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and wit­ness state­ments and for their suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing.