St Ann constable allegedly demanded $250,000 from crash victim, granted bail

Court papers allege that Police Constable Andrew Allydice asked a motorist for $250,000 in exchange for filing a favourable account of a traffic collision, before he was caught in a sting operation by investigators.

Allydice, attached to the St Ann Police Division, had been held in custody since his arrest on April 20. He was offered bail of $600,000 when he appeared in the St Ann Parish Court on Tuesday.

Alongside the bail order, the presiding judge directed that a stop order be lodged at the island's ports, instructed the constable to hand over his travel documents to the authorities, and required him to report to the police each Thursday.

A summary of the allegations, set out in court documents reviewed by The Gleaner, offers fresh detail on how the matter unfolded. According to those papers, the constable first met the motorist on April 10 while responding to a crash along the main road in Runaway Bay.

The motorist told investigators that Allydice offered to “fix the accident report in his favour if he gave him $250,000”. When the driver said he could not raise that sum, the constable allegedly replied that “the lowest amount he would take is $230,000”.

The complaint prompted investigators to set up a sting, the documents state. Law-enforcement sources have previously said the motorist carried marked notes hidden inside a brown envelope when he went to meet the constable at the St Ann's Bay Police Station on April 20, where he was shown into a private office.

According to the court papers, “the complainant handed over a brown envelope containing J$15,000 with marked cash to the suspect” at Allydice's request, and the constable was taken into custody shortly afterwards.

Allydice is due back in court on June 3.