Judge stays criminal charges against firearms dealer

A HIGH Court judge has permanently stayed the criminal charges against firearms dealer Brent Thomas.

In a strongly-worded decision, Justice Devindra Rampersad also had very harsh words for the police in securing warrants for Thomas’s arrest and the manner in which he was, saying, “when looked at in the round,” it was a “complete and utter stripping away” of Thomas’s “dignity and reputation” and that of his business, Specialist Shooters Training Centre, “with the clear objective of pummelling and humiliating the first claimant with search warrant after search warrant and the September arrest and the October abduction all to obviously bring him to his knees.”

The judge’s comments came in his ruling on a claim filed by Thomas over his prosecution for firearm-related offences. Rampersad is expected to assess damages for the various breaches and Newsday was told it could amount to millions as the police’s actions, which were condemned by the court, had basically led to the shutting down of his dealership.

Thomas was first arrested on September 29, 2022, and later released. He was re-arrested in Barbados, from where he intended to travel to Miami to meet his cardiologist, and said he was forcibly returned to Trinidad. He was later charged with possession of a series of weapons, including grenades and rifles.

In his constitutional motion, he challenged his detention and the procurement of search warrants for his home and his dealership.

Rampersad granted the numerous declarations Thomas had asked for and also ordered that his ruling be sent to the Justice of the Peace Association and the Commissioner of Police on what information is required, on oath, for the procurement of search warrants by officers.

In his lengthy decision, Rampersad held that from the evidence, he was satisfied that the warrants were “unlawfully obtained.”

In his claim, Thomas had argued that for every weapon that he was charged with, he had permits issued and signed by the commissioner.

He also contended that for two decades, his company has supplied guns, ammunition and other services to the State, including the police, defence force and prison, therefore his possession of certain weapons was not a secret to the police.

Rampersad pointed out that these permits were never revoked. He also voided the various warrants obtained by Sgt Matthew Haywood and ASP Birch. He said Birch’s admission that he did not speak to anyone who granted the permits was a “shocking admission.”

He also said not only were the warrants in breach of Thomas’s rights, but the “entire series of events that unfolded from ASP Birch’s intervention was oppressive harassment.”

He also pointed out that, “for a significant amount of time, ASP Birch and the TTPS were in control of the second claimant’s premises and yet search warrants were being issued with increasing breadth as the days passed.

“These incidents took place shortly after the Stanley John report came out as mentioned by ASP Birch in relation to the granting of firearms licences by the former commissioner of police, Gary Griffith, and it was clearly in the public domain with respect to some sort of impropriety emanating from that tenure.

“One gets the impression from the one-pointed focus that ASP Birch had on these claimants that he was determined to find something which could incriminate the claimants notwithstanding the documentary evidence before him.

“All of the information that he was seeking was plainly obvious and available. He was aware that former commissioners of police, not just Mr Griffith, had granted the first claimant import permits and licenses in relation to automatic weapons and what he termed to be ‘grenades’.

“That included the then-acting commissioner, Mr Jacob. Therefore, the source of the claimants’ ostensible authority to have the items was plainly available.

“There was no allegation of impropriety in the grant of those licences so that, on the face of it, ASP Birch was plainly railroading his own summary judgment of the validity of those licenses over the claimants.

“... There was no doubt that the first claimant had the licences and had the permissions in relation to the items to authorise him, to the best of his ability, to have those items.”

Rampersad said the weapons were in plain view and there was no attempt by Thomas to hide them when the police went to his dealership in Aranjuez.

“It is not as though he discovered them clandestinely concealed. It is not as though the firearms were unexpectedly found by means of some search exercise. Instead, they were exactly where they were expected to have been – in the first claimant’s vault, with respect to the automatic weapons.”

“ASP Birch was aware of these things and of those permissions. However instead of approaching it in a genuinely bona fide attempt to abate his concerns with respect to an established provider of arms and ammunitions in the market in Trinidad and Tobago involving a 61-year-old proprietor thereof with no history or record of illegality or impropriety, he approached it antagonistically and oppressively through the ill-begotten search warrants already discussed. Without details, without specifics, and without proper information, ASP Birch and the TTPS ensconced themselves in the second claimant’s premises and took it over for months.”

Rampersad also said the true manifestation of Birch’s intent came with Thomas’ “abduction in Barbados.”

He also chastised Birch’s failure to provide any information to the court on Thomas’ detention in Barbados and on what basis did he and senior Supt Suzette Martin boarded a flight to that island along with Cpl Joefield to arrest Thomas. The police claimed Thomas had intended to travel to Greece but the judge said no evidence was given by them to substantiate that claim.

“In the absence of any other information, and bearing in mind the chronology and fact that the court does have before it, the court is therefore at liberty to infer that ASP Birch and or other unknown members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service caused the detention of the first claimant in Barbados by enlisting the assistance of the Barbados Police Force to so do.

“...The very fact of the handover at the airport near the tarmac is indicative of this inference having regard to ASP Birch’s involvement prior to the detention in Barbados and the handover to him. That ASP Birch and those who were involved on the day – SS Martin and Corporal Joefield – have not faced sanctions for their clarity, and admittedly, unlawful acts as police officers, as far as this court has been informed, and that they have been able to continue in their offices without investigation is, to my mind, a shameful blot on this country.”

“ The fact that ASP Birch not only returned to Trinidad with the first claimant but was allowed to continue what seems to have been this obsessive pursuit of the first claimant by following up with two other search warrants issued in the excessively broad manners that they were, taking up everything in plain sight, speaks volumes for the level of oppression and harassment that these claimants faced.”

The judge also said, “ Words cannot express the abhorrence that the court feels towards this unlawful act in a supposedly civilised society governed by a Constitution in which the freedoms of the citizens are supposed to be protected.”

He said that a police officer, no less, “can leave this jurisdiction in what the first claimant described to be a non-commercial airplane owned by the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force – details of which ASP Birch seems to have deliberately excluded – clearly demonstrates the intention to get the first claimant at all costs.

“The level of the determination to bring the first claimant under his control seems almost obsessive. They obviously had no jurisdiction to detain the first claimant in Barbados.

“The intention, therefore, was to have him detained there and to forcibly abduct him under the pretence of police legitimacy since there is no evidence that the first claimant accompanied this contingent from Trinidad willingly.”

He also said it was no defence to say that the “unlawfulness” of the police’s actions took place outside TT and “ the return of the first claimant to Trinidad was mere happenstance.

“This was all by design. A design hatched in Trinidad and Tobago, executed in Barbados upon the request and direction of the TTPS, fructified on the tarmac of the Grantley Adams Airport in Barbados and finalised upon their return to Trinidad and Tobago.”

“There is absolutely no plausible reason for ASP Birch and the TTPS to have abducted the first claimant in the way that he was. This was an act which breached such deeply ingrained fundamental freedoms under the Constitution – the right to the protection of the law, the right to due process and the right to freely move about. One cannot say that ASP Birch and the TTPS would not have understood the importance of these constitutional freedoms but, it seems, the end justified the means.”

On the oaths given by the police to procure the various search warrants, the judge said they fell “fatally short of the provisions of the law.”

Rampersad also said the justices of the peace who signed off on them did not have reasonable information before him to do so.

“Five search warrants sought and obtained in relatively quick succession with increasing expansivity. That, when coupled with the habeas corpus proceedings and the illegal abduction, reeks of oppression and harassment.

“This is of course all quite apart from the fact that the search warrants themselves were procured without the constitutional safeguard of due process and the protection of the law being adhered to in light of the failure to provide information upon which the justice of the peace could have come to the judicial decision that was required of him.

“As mentioned, this apparent rubber-stamping by the justices of the peace involved is deprecated.”

Rampersad also condemned the police’s “apparent contempt for this court and the due process of law,” when he made orders for the return of Thomas’s receipt books, firearm registers, firearm users licence, the keys to his business, his mobile phone and his handguns.

He said after that order, a fresh search warrant was issued to “try to stifle this court’s order and bypass it.”

In relation to Thomas’s mobile phone and keys, he said when they were handed over to him, they were re-seized on an alleged fresh warrant “in an obvious attempt to frustrate this court’s order.”

Among the declarations granted by the judge on the unlawfulness of the actions of the police, he also declared that the criminal proceedings against Thomas were an abuse of process. He further ordered that all items taken from the firearms dealer be returned while permanently staying the criminal case.

The order for damages for Thomas and his dealership will include losses incurred as a result of the latter’s lockdown from August 22, 2022, the unlawful seizure of items from him; damage to their “personal and commercial reputation/goodwill.”

Rampersad is also expected to consider submissions from Thomas and Special Shooters on if they intend to pursue further action against the police relating to the failure to provide him with information when he was arrested on September 29, 2022; and the failure by police to allow him to retain an attorney during his detention.

Last month, the Appeal Court, in a ruling on a preliminary issue involving Rampersad’s orders to return the items, dismissed the Attorney General’s complaint that the judge failed to consider public-interest factors and the cross-contamination argument.

It was the AG’s contention that the order for the return of the items was incapable of enforcement since it exposed the Attorney General to “cross-contamination” of the Constitution by being asked to “interfere with the independent operations of the police service and the prosecution of crime.”

Thomas was represented by Senior Counsel Fyard Hosein, Devesh Maharaj, Sasha Bridgemohansingh and Cheyenne Lugo.

Representing the AG were Senior Counsel Gilbert Peterson, Vanessa Gopaul, Svetlana Dass, Michelle Benjamin, Lianne Thomas and Adana Hosang. The Director of Public Prosecutions who was named as the second defendant in Thomas’s claim was represented by Senior Counsel Ian Benjamin, Tekiyah Jorsling, Laura Persad and Chantelle Le Gall.