Prison stay breaks defiant ex-cop

A two-week prison stay seemed enough to break a former police officer who is now a security guard, who defied a court order relating to his wife.

Senior Magistrate Rickie Burnett said, last week Monday, that that was his conclusion when the man reappeared before the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court, after the two-week remand, ahead of sentencing.

But that was not only the conclusion of the magistrate, as the defendant’s wife had formed a similar opinion after she visited him in jail.

“I’d like to apologise for my action. I promise I will not do it again,” the defendant said, as his wife stood in the other dock.

“Well, you better say that and mean it because I am going to send you out but I wouldn’t want you to go out and do the same thing,” Burnett told the defendant.

The complainant told the court that she had visited her husband while he was in prison and he had expressed remorse and felt much degraded by his incarceration.

The wife said that many of the prisoners knew that her husband was a former police officer and this resulted in great embarrassment for him.

She, however, told the court that while she would not want him to go back to prison, for her own protection, she would like the court to bond him to keep the peace.

Burnett told the woman that he suspected that she would have visited her husband in prison.

“I know how to deal with these matters,” the senior magistrate said, adding that sending the man to prison for two weeks was no accident.

“My intention was to break him and change him; and shame him as well,” he said.

“And consider yourself a lucky man because once you breach a court order, you should be doing a sentence,” the senior magistrate further told the defendant.

“I don’t want you to be remorseful because of certain things and go back to the old man,” the magistrate further said.

Burnett bonded the man for one year in the sum of EC$2,000. If he breaks the bond, he must pay the amount forthwith or go to prison for three months.