Trinidad: Muslim cop awarded TT$185,000 in compensation after hijab ban

(Trinidad Guardian) A Mus­lim Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP), who suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pol­i­cy ban­ning fe­male of­fi­cers from wear­ing hi­jabs while on du­ty, has been award­ed $185,000 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

Al­though High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed up­held Sharon Roop’s con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion law­suit in No­vem­ber last year, she on­ly as­sessed the com­pen­sa­tion owed to her dur­ing a hear­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain,. In a 51-page rul­ing, Mo­hammed ruled that Roop, of Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas, was en­ti­tled to $125,000 in gen­er­al and ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages for the emo­tion­al dis­tress, pain, and an­guish she suf­fered while be­ing sub­ject to the TTPS’s now dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pol­i­cy. 

In as­sess­ing the com­pen­sa­tion, Mo­hammed con­sid­ered five in­stances where Roop claimed the ap­pli­ca­tion of the pol­i­cy caused her dis­tress. 

Roop, who has been an SRP since 2009, be­gan wear­ing a hi­jab af­ter she start­ed to ac­tive­ly prac­tice her re­li­gion in 2014.

The first in­stance was when Roop at­tempt­ed to get as­sis­tance from the Women’s Po­lice Bu­reau to ad­vo­cate for her right to wear her hi­jab but was turned away and told she could be pros­e­cut­ed for breach­ing the TTPS’s uni­form pol­i­cy. 

The sec­ond came on March 8, 2016, when Roop was asked to at­tend In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day cel­e­bra­tions at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.  Roop, who was off-du­ty, wore busi­ness at­tire and her hi­jab but was told by a se­nior of­fi­cer that she could not par­tic­i­pate as she dressed in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. 

Lat­er that day, Roop was ap­proached by an­oth­er se­nior of­fi­cer who threat­ened to in­sti­tute dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against her for wear­ing the hi­jab. 

Sev­er­al months lat­er, Roop was ap­proached by an­oth­er se­nior of­fi­cer who sug­gest­ed that he may have to trans­fer her from the di­vi­sion’s wire­less room as the TTPS was com­bat­ing gangs in cen­tral Trinidad with al­leged Is­lam­ic links. 

The last dis­crim­i­na­to­ry in­ci­dent oc­curred in De­cem­ber 2017 when for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams stat­ed, in his wit­ness state­ment in the case, that the TTPS ac­com­mo­dat­ed Chris­t­ian of­fi­cers who wished to wear cross­es and rosaries and Hin­du of­fi­cers, who wear rak­sha su­tra strings.

“The TTPS was there­fore tol­er­ant to­wards oth­er re­li­gions to some ex­tent, de­spite its stand of re­li­gious neu­tral­i­ty which it took in this mat­ter,” Mo­hammed said, as she de­scribed Williams’ stance as in­sen­si­tive and care­less. 

Mo­hammed al­so took is­sue with the fact that Williams took over two years to re­spond to Roop’s re­quest, which was first made in 2015. 

“In my opin­ion, this lack of cour­tesy by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice demon­strat­ed that he showed ab­solute­ly no ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the grav­i­ty of the re­quest made by the Claimant and the im­por­tance of this sen­si­tive mat­ter giv­en the fun­da­men­tal rights pro­vi­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Mo­hammed said. 

Mo­hammed al­so re­ject­ed the State’s chal­lenge against award­ing vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages for breach­ing Roop’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of re­li­gious be­lief and ob­ser­vance. She or­dered that the State pay an ad­di­tion­al $60,000 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

Quot­ing the na­tion­al an­them, Mo­hammed said: “These are not words which per­sons who live, work and con­duct busi­ness in this Re­pub­lic are to pay mere lip ser­vice to. They are words which are to re­mind the peo­ple of T&T on a dai­ly ba­sis of the type of so­ci­ety which cit­i­zens are to con­tin­ue to strive to main­tain.” 

As part of the judge­ment, Mo­hammed or­dered the State to pay Roop’s le­gal costs for bring­ing the law­suit. How­ev­er, Mo­hammed ad­journed her as­sess­ment of the le­gal costs to March, next year. 

Roop was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Alvin Pariags­ingh, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, and Che Din­di­al. Tinuke Gib­bons-Glenn, Ste­fan Jaikaran, Can­dice Alexan­der, and Svet­lana Dass rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.