Who is popular today?

THE EDITOR: My first response when I read the news story on the ruling of the court in the matter of Brent Thomas and the TTPS was total outrage, mainly because of my knowledge of the distinguished gentleman and my own personal experience of the type of targeted unfairness and oppressive treatment that can occur within the police service.
I have known Thomas for several years and one of the best ways I can describe him is as a gentleman with a big heart, because I witnessed how he took a group of everyday young men of low social status and insignificance and dedicated his time, resources and expertise as a highly qualified shooting coach to groom them into highly competitive and proficient athletes.
The most famous of them was Roger Daniel, three-time Olympian and multiple national Sportsman of the Year. There is also his unofficial adopted son, Marlon Moses, another young black man who Thomas took under his wings and nurtured into a very fine athlete.
So when I read of his incarceration and alleged impropriety it left me baffled because of how highly I consider Thomas and knowing/believing that such damning allegations ought to have been thoroughly scrutinised by the hierarchy of the police to be doubly certain that there was sufficient cogent evidence to support the very serious allegations.
I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing and that my extremely high impression of Thomas may have been misdirected.
And now to realise that this entire affair and the conduct of the police were held by the court to be unlawful and an erosion of Thomas’s constitution rights is shocking, to say the least, though I am elated to see he has been vindicated.
I nevertheless have to ponder on what a travesty of justice and abuse of process and authority this was. Further, if this can happen to such a person of status, who fortunately can afford to protect his rights, what will or can happen to those who can’t? Very troubling indeed.
What perplexed me even more were the police officers named in this matter. I have known both Sgt Haywood and ASP Birch, having worked with them at the Homicide Bureau and having interacted with Birch for years playing football within our department. What has transpired appears to be out of character of how I perceived them both to be.
I will be the first to acknowledge that there are police officers who can easily be described as malicious or wicked and capable of such alleged abuse. However, those two officers have never caused me to so label them.
After reading more specific details of the court case and also having looked at the relevant sections of the Firearms Act, I am more inclined to believe that this was a case of a legal hot potato that some individuals/officers avoided holding.
That certain informed entities in the police service appear not to be involved or did not get involved in this matter, especially the "recovery" of Thomas from another country, has raised more questions than answers.
Those entities that were not mentioned that ought to have been involved, from my understanding, are the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the Immigration and Customs Departments and the Interpol section of the TTPS. (The latter would normally play a major role in such sensitive exercises.) Therefore their apparent omissions is very peculiar.
This is why at this point I will not change my perception of the police officers named as I strongly suspect that there is more to this that meets the eye.
I also believe that there are highly technical legal issues here that may have to be finally resolved at our highest judicial forum, the Privy Council, such is the complexity of this case.

C MARSHALL

retired police officer
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