Amandala has been reliably informed that the Police Department has initiated disciplinary proceedings against police sergeants Lawrence Humes, 38, Jacinto Roches, 42, and corporals Renel Grant, 33, and Nelson Middleton, 39.
Attorney for the accused officers, Richard “Dickie” Bradley, told Amandala that he would visit the Hattieville Prison to speak with his clients about a series of events that has reportedly left them shaken.
Our understanding is that the Department apparently sent the men notices of a disciplinary tribunal to be held at the prison, on a single charge of facilitation of the landing of a plane on the Southern Highway in Bladen Village on November 13, 2010. The aircraft was found to have contained 2, 921 kilos of cocaine, much of which has since been destroyed.
The men wrote Commissioner of Police Crispin Jeffries protesting that they had not had enough time to prepare with their attorneys, Bradley and Ellis Arnold, and had not even been given the details of the allegations against them. They asked for more time to achieve this.
Bradley told us that he did not know if the tribunal, whose first hearing was set for last Wednesday, had gone ahead.
But in his view, it would have been “inherently unfair” to his clients, because the police have control of the entire matter, including selecting the adjudicator, prosecutor and defense counsel for the accused, all fellow police officers.
Humes, Roches, Grant and Middleton are all on interdiction.
To date, our attempts to reach the Department’s Internal Affairs Unit on this matter have been unsuccessful.