Senior fined for trying to bribe traffic cops

A 73-year-old businessman was moved to tears on Thursday as he was sentenced for attempting to bribe members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force with $10,000 not to be ticketed for several breaches of the Road Traffic Act.

According to reports on the Crown’s file that was shared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court, a team of cops attached to the Public Safety and Traffic Enforcement Branch was conducting checks along a roadway in the Corporate Area when they signalled the defendant, Vincent Edwards, to stop. Edwards did not have a valid driver’s licence, certificate of motor vehicle fitness, motor vehicle registration or insurance coverage. The breaches, according to the investigating officer, would amount to $80,000 in fines.

It was shared with the court that Edwards went into his vehicle, and returned with a pouch containing the vehicle documents and $10,000 and handed it to the cops, asking them not to give him the tickets for the infractions.

Lennard Green, the attorney-at-law representing the elderly man, related that his client was “induced” by the policeman’s utterances to make the proposal of $10,000 not to be ticketed.

“He said ‘A nuh bribery that man. Me just a give yuh the money because me caah afford nuh ticket right now’. In the circumstances, I crave you to be lenient and to regard this as an act of gross indiscretion,” Green submitted.

But Senior Parish Judge Lori-Anne Cole-Montaque was not entirely swayed by the lawyer’s submissions.

“Your lawyer has asked me to look at it as a sort of inducement, as a sort of provocation, but I don’t think it is a far-fetched, but I wouldn’t say inducement. But I can see for a man of 73 years old, that a ‘man of straw’, meaning you’re not wealthy, I can appreciate why, after being stopped by an officer and you’re being told for example that ‘This breach is detected, this breach is detected and you’re going to pay $80,000’, I can appreciate what might have factored in your mind at that time,” she said.

“The cultural thing to us Jamaicans is ‘Mek me see weh me can do’. You ought to have known better but I think you are sincere in your remorse,” Judge Cole-Montaque added.

The senior jurist indicated that the appropriate sentence would be a fine. Edwards was fined $50,000 or six months’ imprisonment. – T.T.

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