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The Ju­di­cia­ry has come un­der sharp crit­i­cism from the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) for its re­sponse to con­cerns about vir­tu­al court hear­ings be­ing con­duct­ed from po­lice sta­tions.

In a me­dia re­lease ad­dress­ing com­ments made by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Mnis­ter Roger Alexan­der, the Ju­di­cia­ry de­nied that po­lice sta­tions were func­tion­ing as court­rooms, stat­ing in­stead that ac­cused per­sons are sim­ply placed be­fore a com­put­er for a vir­tu­al ap­pear­ance.

The Ju­di­cia­ry al­so claimed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised that it could no longer pro­vide of­fi­cers to staff court­rooms, ex­cept in cas­es where pris­on­ers were present in the dock. This, the Ju­di­cia­ry said, now dic­tates how court op­er­a­tions are man­aged.