Parish council bigwigs charged after cocaine seizure

Two senior municipal officials who were last week nabbed while allegedly attempting to smuggle an estimated $5 million worth of cocaine out of the island have now been slapped with multiple charges.

Detectives assigned to the Firearms and Narcotics Investigation Division (FNID) have charged 40-year-old Trevon Clayton, the chief financial officer at the St Ann Municipal Council, and 42-year-old Latoya Hemmings, a senior managing accountant at the Trelawny Municipal Council.

Hemmings resides in Spicy Hill, Trelawny, while Clayton lives in Falmouth, Trelawny. The pair, who were bound for New York, now join 51-year-old Martin Walker, a detective inspector of police, among a growing list of high-ranking individuals charged with cocaine trafficking in recent weeks.

Walker, who is assigned to the police's elite Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigations Branch, was arrested in a separate incident on January 8 after cocaine with an estimated street value of $3.5 million was allegedly found in his vehicle.

On Sunday, FNID Director, Senior Superintendent of Police Patrae Rowe, said traffickers appear to have become "emboldened".

"Because, you know, they are travelling through airports. They are 'soloing'. It's as if they have reasonable assurances that they will go through," he told THE STAR.

"They move around on our roads, they move through our public spaces, they move to our port of entries as if they have no regard for the system that is set up to detect them," he said.

That confidence, Rowe warned, points to something deeper and more dangerous.

"And that reasonable assurance can always and only be secured from ... a collusion within our airports and within our ports of entry and within society at all levels."

Police said FNID personnel intercepted Walker at a business establishment on Moore Street in Kingston 4 on January 8.

In the case involving Clayton and Hemmings, investigators said the two were travelling together and had checked in at the Sangster International Airport in St James for a flight bound for New York. During a security screening, they were intercepted and searched, and packages containing cocaine were reportedly discovered in luggage belonging to both individuals.

A quantity of cash in United States currency was also seized from Hemmings' handbag.

Both were taken into custody, and Clayton later admitted to ingesting cocaine pellets. He was transported to hospital, where he remains under police guard after expelling 82 cocaine pellets.