00:00Justice Minister Devish Maharaj and Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander made a pop-up visit to the Bessel Street police station today to assess the situation.
00:12Well we visited to understand first-hand the question of the virtual courtrooms being held in the police stations and the police are really inconvenienced by a lot of their space being taken up with the computers and the virtual courtrooms.
00:28And we are trying to find a quick solution, a short-term solution in the first instance to alleviate the problem.
00:35And we think we have found a solution but we won't disclose it just yet because we have some visits to make to the Port of Spain Magistrates Court.
00:45Here's what they gleaned.
00:47These four or five rooms are totally discommoded.
00:50The ID parade room which is used by the police of course for identification by victims of crime is totally unusable because it has been converted to a virtual courtroom.
01:05It's highly regular.
01:07And so if you have to do an ID parade, the police have to go up to possibly Barataria station and sometimes as far as law operator.
01:18There are, he explained, about six to seven such stations across the country facilitating the virtual courtrooms first introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
01:28Inspector Drewel Braffitt, the officer in charge of the Bessel Street Station, has a first-hand view of what exactly happens.
01:37So there were several rooms that were available to the officers before such as the interview room as well as the ID parade room.
01:42Those rooms have become, have been repurposed actually for the courts.
01:46So now we have no interview room, no ID parade room at this station at this time.
01:49And could you remind us as to how this happened?
01:52This came about during the COVID, when the, um, when the actual magistrate's court closed down.
01:58It leads to long and arduous days for all those appearing in court, the officers and even judicial officers.
02:05We service three divisions.
02:07That's the Northeastern Division, Portospin Division and Western Divisions.
02:10All those prisoners come to Bessel Street and have to use one computer.
02:14One computer for that virtual court.
02:17So court sometimes runs very late because it's one person can go before the court at a time,
02:22where previously you would have ten courts sitting simultaneously.
02:25According to Inspector, there's a fundamental flaw being overlooked.
02:30As Braffitt says, it's not just about space.
02:34You cannot really perceive justice if you are facing the courts in the very same building that you are arrested, interrogated,
02:43and detained.
02:46There's no real perception of justice.
02:48He says the solution is simple and welcomes government's swift moves to seeing it come to bear.
02:55As far as we are aware, the magistrate's court has been refurbished and is ready for use.
02:59And it's just sitting there empty right now.
03:01As Minister Maharaj put it.
03:03It's close to boiling point.
03:05Ravashid Tawari, Rupnarain, TV6 News.
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