Joseph’s killer went to great lengths to try and conceal her murder and had it not been for Adrian Ramjattan and his uncle deciding to fish in that particular area of the sea, her body may never have been found. Speaking with Newsday yesterday, Ramjattan said as he looked into the water to see if shrimp were taking his bait, he saw a human leg still wearing a white slipper protruding from the bag which rested on the seabed.

The 24-year-old woman, who joined the TT Police Service last November, had her hands tied behind her back and a stone secured in the knot; had two large stones and a steel anchor secured around her neck via a length of rope and had the right side of her face bashed in.

The killer’s hope was that the stones and anchor would have kept her weighed down on the seabed in the crocus bag. To make doubly sure, the killer also tied three concrete foundation blocks around the crocus bag with rope.

On seeing the leg underwater, Ramjattan and his uncle Indar Jaggernath alerted the owner of the boat who in turn contacted the police. Coast Guard divers freed Joseph’s body from the bag and took the corpse to the Tobago Ferry Terminal where it was viewed by a District Medical Officer (DMO) and ordered removed to the Forensic Sciences Centre in St James.

GOD’S WILL BODY FOUND Ramjattan told Newsday that at 11.15 am, he was trawling for shrimp when the trawling bait board hooked something underwater.

As he looked down, Ramjattan saw a foot protruding from a bag. Ramjattan said that after the police were alerted he was contacted by other police officers who asked him about his location and advised him to remain in the area until their arrival.

“If this is the woman police officer, it is truly a sad day to see how a human being could be dumped like an animal,” Ramjattan said. He added that it was God’s will to compel him to choose that area of the sea to trawl for shrimp and for the bait board to come into contact with the crocus bag.

When Newsday contacted Joseph’s mother Paula Guy, she confirmed when her daughter left home last week Thursday she was wearing a black t-shirt, a pair of jeans and white slippers on her feet.

“Tell me, did they find her body? I want to know now so I can prepare myself for when the police come to me with the official news,” Guy said.

Guy said she was told that police had found a body but they were not sure who it was. Sounding as if she was close to tears, Guy asked if Newsday could call back later. Speaking with Newsday an hour later, Guy confirmed she was contacted by police but she added, “I not going to view any body..so long they looking for my daughter and they never find her. And now they want me to go and look at my child’s body? Not me, I not doing that,” the clearly traumatised woman said.

Telling her mother she was leaving to attend to police business, PC Joseph left her Morvant home last Thursday. She never returned.

A 39-year-old Sea Lots man who was romantically linked to the mother of one, was detained hours after a missing person report was made. Joseph was last posted at Morvant Police Station.

Prior to the body being found, police mounted a major exercise in the Sea Lots area and arrested a 34-year-old man from the area in connection with PC Joseph’s death. Five others were held on outstanding warrants while in an empty lot at Production Drive officers seized 60 rounds of 7.62 ammunition.

OFFICERS IN TEARS At the Morvant police station, when news broke that Joseph’s body was found, some officers wept while others held hands and said a prayer for her.

An officer told Newsday, “This is a wake-up call for young women in society to be extremely careful who they associate with.” Police are working on a theory that Joseph was killed somewhere in Sea Lots and her body dumped at sea.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Irwin Hackshaw who was accompanied by a team of officers led by ASP Ajith Persad to the Tobago Ferry Terminal where Joseph’s body was brought to shore, told Newsday: “the Acting Police Commissioner (Stephen Williams) as well as the Executive were officially informed that the body of WPC Joseph had been found at sea.” ACP Hackshaw said the TTPS’ Victims and Support Unit will provide counselling for relatives of Joseph and her colleagues.

President of the Police Social Welfare Association (PSWA) Insp Michael Seales said, “From the look of things, it appears our worst fears have been realised. While all standard protocols have not been met, all preliminary findings suggest it is her. The Association has been deeply wounded and our heart goes out to the relatives of this young woman and her friends.

“The Association has now to shoulder the responsibility of reaching out to the members at Morvant Station and by extension the North Eastern Division to assist in providing some measure of counselling to mitigate and alleviate the emotions that have been stirred up by this loss of our colleague.

“The Association will spare no effort in trying to provide the necessary support to members of that division and more importantly the father of our lost colleague.”

Yesterday Assistant Commissioner of Police, Irwin Hackshaw confirmed that the Police Service is working with a mandate from government to compile the information to set up the sex registry but he could not give a time frame when the website will be completed and made available to the public.

Hackshaw said that the police is mindful of the fears being expressed by members of the public where the crimes committed against children seem to be a burning concern.

He said the Minister of National Security has expressed a deep interest in ensuring that all the necessary information regarding sex offenders is recorded in the interest of having officers place those persons under surveillance to protect the lives of innocent citizens.

Hackshaw also assured that nationals deported from foreign countries for criminal offences, including those charged with sex crimes committed against children, are being closely monitored by officers in the districts where they reside and by other arms of the Police Service.

According to Hackshaw, based on the deportee list sent to him on a regular basis, about 30 people on average are deported back to this country mainly from the United States and Canada.

He said he has given instructions for returned individuals, who are declared to be paedophiles, to be kept under constant surveillance and added that the monitoring has been stepped in the wake of reports of minors being harmed by sex predators.

He also pointed out that persons charged with other criminal offences in foreign countries, who were deported, are also being monitored closely.

With respect to the release of a sex offenders registry released by the US Justice Department in the United States which lists the names of at least ten Trinidad and Tobago nationals charged with sex crimes against children who were returned to this country, Hackshaw said he was aware of the names appearing in the registry and had given instructions to officers to ensure that these persons are kept under the radar indefinitely.

Garcia on Tuesday disclosed that recommendations for disciplinary action against teachers of the school have been forwarded by the Ministry to the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) which is the body charged with hiring, firing and discipling the nation’s teachers. Doodhai in a press release said, “TTUTA is pained over the statements made by the Minister of Education.” He said the association is deeply disappointed in the manner by which Garcia and the Ministry is treating with the issue. “It seems the minister is engaging in a public relations exercise to cover up the refusal of the Ministry to deal with serious concerns relating to that school that have been placed before it for over four years.

He said disciplinary action is nothing more than a “smoke screen” to make the minister and the ministry look good while using teachers as sacrificial lambs.

TTUTA asserts, Doodhai said, that teachers of the school, as TTUTA members, participated in a picket demonstration on March 6, led by the Association’s General Council, committed no act of misconduct.

“Every citizen has a constitutional right to freedom of expression and lawful protest, the right to picket is enshrined in the Industrial Relations Act and the picket took place during the lunch period of SMSS,” Doodhai said. He added that teachers conducted themselves in a dignified, orderly and peaceful manner even when confronted by chanting students who themselves bore placards and hurled missiles.

“The Minister of Education, being a former TTUTA President led many picket demonstrations and protests against the employer.

He is being nothing more than downright hypocritical when he says these teachers are setting a bad example. The question must be asked, was the Minister of Education setting a bad example when as TTUTA President, he led numerous pickets?”

A Parliament committee has heard details of arrangements which raise many questions. And questions which we hope are answered.

Acting CEO, Capt Jagmohan Singh, said CAL is still paying part of the lease for two Boeing 767 aircraft which CAL was using for its Port-of-Spain to London route.

That route was discontinued on October 6, 2015, almost one month after the People’s National Movement (PNM) won the September 7, 2015, general election.

CAL officials explained that the figure of US$270,000 a month equated to a cost of US$135,000 a month for each of the Boeing 767 planes which the State-owned airline no longer has.

The officials said the agreement to dry lease these planes ends in August.

The two Boeing 767 aircraft are currently in Canada and do not appear to be in use by CAL.

Whether these contract arrangements are standard will be a matter the Parliament’s State Enterprises Joint Select Committee will have to examine. If the terms were not standard, then the circumstances of the arrangements being entered into must be examined.

Either way, the arrangements represent a waste which may have been avoidable with a more coherent system of planning at CAL.

A key issue behind this is to note the timeline involved. It seems crucial decisions were made during a period of transition after a general election. Is this yet another example of why these transition periods — which are inevitable — are dangerous to taxpayers’ interests? How can risks be mitigated? Should crucial decisions to enter or end arrangements be made during such windows? Another matter is whether the State’s multi-tiered system, involving ministerial oversight, public service bureaucracy, and State enterprise procedure, is effective.

Do all these layers really insulate the Treasury or do they open the door to inefficiency and things that are more nefarious? CAL provides a fundamental service, not only to Trinidad and Tobago but to the Caribbean. It has over the last few decades, in its various incarnations, helped bring the diaspora closer together, be it New York or across the pond in the United Kingdom.

Questions will be asked as to why the London route was unprofitable and whether or not it could have been rehabilitated.

Did CAL have the capacity to do this? If not, why? There is also the question of the morale of the staff, seeing one of its premier routes cut and cut painfully.

All of this points to the perennial problem of CAL’s continued levels of losses. When BWIA — CAL’s precursor — was closed down and its unionised workers shed, the rationale of the State then was that it was setting up a company that could be more profitable. That seems to have never occurred. And CAL is still 100 per cent State-owned.

Additionally, CAL benefits from State subsidies, without which the picture is more dire.

We hope the Parliament committee considers the latest revelations not only in terms of a discrete development but also as a part of a more profound examination of how our State enterprises are working. Sadly, it is likely that CAL is not flying solo on all of the issues raised.

I am very heartened by the current movement by principally young women to change the mores of our society with regard to the treatment of women. Every generation has to contribute to the long march that is needed to undo the manipulation of the human heart and mind that goes back millennia and forced women to live with disadvantage, even in the most advanced societies.

As a young woman, I joined other women who fought internationally for what was top of the agenda then: the right to work in any industry and for equal pay; the right of women to have abortions if it saved their own lives, and to practise family planning.

In the generation before mine, women burnt their bras and dared to bare their bodies in daring clothes that conformed to no existing fashion laws. Long before them, women fought for the right to vote and own property. Women continued to build on the now solid body of academic, critical and social writing on feminism that has influenced much of today’s younger feminists. In literature that toil goes back centuries. Jane Austen was no shy feminist although other women writers hid behind male personas, such as George Eliot.

Virginia Woolf commented that much of poetry penned by Anon was by women, unable to enter the world of letters. Rebecca West wrote, exactly a century ago, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.” We may have advanced in many ways but that sentiment is still pertinent today. Women are still deemed as “asking for it,” whatever “it” might be, if we do not conform to received ideas of what constitutes desirable female behaviour, either in the workplace, home, or bedroom.

Laws change culture, eventually, so that is where efforts must be focused. It is why certain religious elements are keen to block and discredit the proposed legislation that is now before the lower House on the outlawing of child marriage, which makes young girls the property of older men. They know that legislation underpins cultural norms, regardless of religious teaching.

When piloting the Bill on child marriage in the Senate, back in January, our Attorney General reminded us that the matter has been debated for 26 years in this country, and it still has not been finally resolved, so nobody underestimates the size of the challenge.

I should point out though that the progress made by women has been aided by men who saw the light and allied themselves with us; by men who acknowledge their responsibility for their own actions and who use their power to bring about change in the minds of other men.

In all the feminist actions that engaged me, men have been pivotal in effecting change as legislators, professionals and thinkers. I feel encouraged that men here are joining in the struggle via Men Against Violence.

The figure of one woman in every three being the victim of male violence in TT is alarming but not out of kilter with the unacceptably high incidence of violent crime.

Women can try to reform men but men must determine what is “real man” behaviour and what is not, and contest the stereotype of the strong man.

The biggest role however is that of the State in determining and enforcing the ways we are allowed to behave

As he opened his contribution, Public Utilities Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said this bill, “is being debated and offered for our consideration at a time when a woman police officer is now missing.” Hinds, a former police officer, said Joseph’s disappearance is, “causing consternation and trauma in the national community, in thePolice Service, among women and among those of us as adults who are concerned for young people in TT, of which she is one.” He added, “This bill is presented for our consideration at a time, when unfortunately we have registered over 100 murders in TT.” Later in the sitting, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal asked National Security Minister Edmund Dillon, across the Parliament floor, whether reports that Joseph’s body were found were true. Responding to what Dillon told him at that time, Moonilal replied, “It is not confirmed? We wait on the Minister of National Security.

During this presentation, his opinion might change.” Moonilal recalled recently having to attend the funeral of three persons murdered in his constituency and said there are no comforting words that politicians could give to grieving families in those circumstances.

“On this occasion when it is reported that the young policewoman has been found, we are traumatised and upset by the fact that even the police are not immune to violence and lawlessness in our society,” Ameen said. She noted with concern the growing number of people who no longer feel safe in their own homes.

“Nyasha was a young woman who decided to join the Police Service to give national service and she too has fallen victim (to crime). We don’t know the circumstances – whether it was domestic or related to her job – but the fact is that women all over are perpetual targets and no person is immune. I hope that her killers are found and brought to justice and in a speedy manner.” Ameen said that relative to the number of murders taking place in TT, she was dissatisfied with the number of people arrested for such offences. “I really would like to see justice happen for all these families who lose loved ones. I suspect the police will work expeditiously to find the killers of the young policewoman but also let us not forget a number of other women who have lost their lives and those who are missing.

“There are so many teenagers and young women missing without a trace and the grief of those families must not be forgotten.

I want to extend condolences to the family of Nyasha, particularly noting the fact that she is a young mother of a four year old, and the family would now have an additional duty to look after and raise this child.

Yesterday, one of the men involved in the act pleaded guilty to felony murder and two counts of robbery moments before he was expected to go on trial before a jury and Justice Devan Rampersad in the Port-of-Spain First Criminal Court.

Christopher Lewis was re-arraigned and the foreperson of the jury was directed to return a guilty of felony murder verdict. He is expected to be sentenced when a probation officer’s report and other reports from the prison are completed. Appearing for the State was senior prosecutor Joy Balkaran while attorney Amarelle Francis represented Lewis in the capital matter. He is also represented by attorney Fulton Wilson in the robbery matters.

Felony murder is a classification of murder which no longer carries an automatic death sentence.

The rule empowers judges to bypass the mandatory death penalty for murder in lieu of a prison sentence in cases where a person kills another while committing another criminal offence. Sorias, 33, was found tied to a tree with wounds to his face.

He was chopped and stabbed. He was clad only in his underwear and socks and his white armless jersey was used to tie his arms around the tree trunk.

The young farmer left his home at the half mile mark on the By- Pass Road, Arima around 9 pm on Carnival Tuesday to go to Arima to buy a bottle of rum to celebrate his nephew’s birthday. When he did not return his brother Mervyn went in search of him and found his car parked along Sorzano Street with its stereo missing.

A report was made to the Arima police and at 9 am his body was found tied to the tree along a track.

His money was missing. Lewis claimed in a statement to police that he was with three other men when they abducted Sorias and took him to the track off Sorzano Street.

Lewis said he did not tell anyone because he was afraid for himself and his family. It was his interview notes, caution statement as well as Sorias’ blood found on his pants that implicated Lewis in the killing.

Justice Frank Seepersad, presiding in the San Fernando High Court, ruled that the public interest would not be served by revealing such personal information of other police officers. Especially, the judge added, where the police officer who is seeking said declaration has already gotten his 35 points when the State conceded in his lawsuit, that he should have been so awarded by virtue of the fact that he earned a Bachelor of Law degree.

Corporal Ramdeo Sookdeo was therefore promoted to the rank of Sergeant following a Consent Order entered to by the State in the lawsuit he filed over the failure of the Police Commissioner to promote him on the basis of his law degree.

Sookdeo filed the lawsuit when his name did not appear on the list for promotion.

His attorneys contended in the lawsuit that Sookdeo was entitled to the promotion but also should have been provided a certified copy of the complete list as well as the points awarded to all eligible officers. The State conceded and awarded Sookdeo the points and he was retroactively promoted with effect from April last year.

The State also conceded that Sookdeo should be paid all outstanding salaries due by virtue of the retroactive appointment.

However, the State did not agree with Sookdeo’s attorneys’ submissions that it had a duty to provide him with the list and inclusive of the points awarded to all eligible officers named on the list.

Justice Seepersad delivered a written judgement yesterday that it was unreasonable to disclose the points the officer’s colleagues obtained. The judge stated that in making such a determination, the question must be asked whether the public interest overrode the right of privacy of other officers and the relevance of disclosing that information in resolving the issue in Sookdeo’s case.

The murders happened in 2005 and yesterday Anand Baboolal, 40, went on trial in the San Fernando High Court before a judge and jury who began hearing evidence after the State opened the 13-year-old case in which Justice Althea Alexis-Windsor is presiding.

Senior State attorney Shabanna Shah told the jury that on August 13, 2005, police officers went to Mafeking Road, Mayaro, where they saw the body of Ishmael Timothy Ragbir. The child’s body was on the bank of the Mafeking River and the discovery led police to the home of his mother, Ria Ramlochan, 28, at Solomon Street, Mayaro.

They saw her feet protruding out of a latrine pit on the eastern side of her house. The judge and jury heard that Ramlochan had three stab wounds to the chest. Shah said the prosecution would draw their attention to police interview notes in which the accused Baboolal made certain admissions.

He allegedly told police upon arrest, that while home with Ramlochan there was a fight and she had a knife in her hand.

He took the knife and stabbed her. Shah said that the accused also admitted that the child who was on a bed, was also stabbed.

She called Ramlochan’s mother Shakila Gookool, who swore on The Holy Gita and sobbed as she gave evidence.

She testified that her daughter visited her a few days before on the occasion of her (Gookool) birthday at her home in South Oropouche.

On the day of her birthday, Ramlochan called and wished her happy birthday. Gookool said that she telephoned her daughter subsequently but got no answer.

The woman testified that she held a funeral service for her daughter and grandson.

Photographs taken by police were tendered into evidence and shown to the jury. The trial continues today.