The Tribune

By SANCHESKA DORSETT

Tribune Staff Reporter

sdorsett@tribunemedia.net

A ROYAL BAHAMAS Police Force officer was fired on Tuesday after he allegedly failed a “random drug test” and was seen by detectives “wearing gang colours at a gang function.”

According to the Force Order that was obtained by The Tribune, the constable was discharged on September 21 as “he has ceased to be an efficient or effective police officer and his discharge is deemed necessary in the public interest.

“Particulars are that sometime on Monday, September 19, the constable was selected for a random drug test at the Police Forensic Laboratory which proved positive,” the document said.

“A secondary test of the same sample was conducted by an independent laboratory which also proved positive. Further, the constable has associated himself with a known criminal gang and was identified by detectives on Sunday September 18, wearing gang colours at a gang function.”

Head of the Central Detective Unit, Chief Superintendent Clayton Fernander confirmed that the officer was terminated from the police force, but could not give any details.

In July, The Tribune reported that two officers were fired after they were convicted of stealing nearly $22,000 from a man during a traffic stop in Grand Bahama.

The men appeared before the RBPF’s Court of Inquiry Tribunal where they were convicted and subsequently discharged from the police force.

And in May, two other police officers were also dismissed from the force and charged before the courts where they pleaded guilty to stealing three Samsung phones after responding to a break in at the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC).

In January, Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade revealed that 14 officers were discharged from the RBPF in 2015, a number of whom “went before the courts charged for criminal offences.”

Commissioner Greenslade also said that many of the officers charged for criminal matters were “of bad disposition and bad behaviour before they committed the offence.”