Police officer sentenced to 8 years for rape

A police officer convicted of rape last week was sentenced to eight years in prison today in the Supreme Court. Before the sentencing, Crispin Jeffries Jr. asked Justice Adolph Lucas to be as lenient as possible and stated that when he left home on the night of March thirteenth, 2004, he did not have any intention of breaching the law and that apart from a traffic accident, he never had any run-ins with the law. Jeffries also pointed out he had been a youth leader for nine years. Commissioner of Police Gerald Westby offered his sympathy to the victim and her family and said while he could not overlook the incident in question, he begged for mercy for Jeffries and said he was a humble person, well liked, and a good father to his children. Principal of Excelsior High School, Gail Marie Thompson, said Jeffries had assisted with projects in Port Loyola and the youth programme and trained the Excelsior marching band for the past two years. Justice Lucas told Jeffries that because his two friends were paired up at the hotel that night, he “must have been concerned whether you will get sexual fulfilment.” After giving him the eight years, Lucas added “in the years of good policemen, women came to the police, police were never short of women. You created your own trap. You could have been somebody for a long time, but now you are stopped.” The victim, an eighteen year old woman, testified during the trial that she and two other women, including her sister, accompanied Jeffries and two friends to a hotel on the Northern Highway after an event at which Jeffries was a deejay, and only agreed to go with him to a room because he was a police officer and she felt he would not hurt her.