Cop on bribery charge to spend holiday behind bars
Published:Friday | December 24, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
A policeman who took $2,000 from a motorist in exchange for not proseuting him for a breach of the Road Traffic Act will have to spend Christmas in prison.
Constable Dewayne Williams was taken into custody this week to serve his four-month prison sentence after the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal.
Resident Magistrate Lorna Shelly Williams had convicted Williams in February for a breach of the Corruption Prevention Act.
Evidence was led at the trial that the policeman corruptly solicited $2,000 from a motorist not to prosecute him for a breach of the Road Traffic Act.
The motorist had testified in the Corporate Area Resident Magis-trate's Court that on June 8, 2009, he was stopped by policemen in the vicinity of Duke Street and Heroes Circle, downtown Kingston. He said he was accused of failing to stop at the intersection. Williams asked him what he was going to do about it because he was going to give him a ticket.
Nabbed at market place
He told Williams he did not have any money on him. Williams asked for his cellular phone number and he gave him. Williams called him about midday and identified himself as the policeman who had given him the traffic ticket. Williams asked him to give him $2,000 and said he would call him later.
The motorist called Kingfish and police from the Anti-Corruption Branch set up a sting operation. Williams and the motorist met at the Market Place on Constant Spring Road in St Andrew. The marked money was found in the policeman's car.
Williams had said in his defence that after he gave the motorist the traffic ticket, the motorist said he worked at a computer store and gave him a number to call the store.
He said he called the motorist to check out the price for a computer. He met with the motorist at the Market Place, but it was in relation to the purchase of a computer. When he went there, he said the motorist asked him what he could do about the traffic ticket. Williams said the motorist threw the money into his motor car and shortly after plain-clothes policemen came up and arrested him.
The resident magistrate found Williams guilty and, in sentencing him, said the sentence should act as a deterrent to other persons who might wish to embark on such acts.
Williams appealed on the grounds that the resident magistrate erred in convicting him because the evidence led was not sufficient to meet the elements of the specific statutory definition of an act of corruption.