A 22-year-old plumber from east Port-of-Spain has been placed on a bond for wear­ing a cam­ou­flage short pants. 

Ju­liano Gar­cia was placed on the $500 bond to keep the peace af­ter he plead­ed guilty to the of­fence be­fore Mag­is­trate Sarah De Sil­va in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

Un­der the con­di­tions of the bond, if Gar­cia is ar­rest­ed for an­oth­er of­fence over the next few years he will have to go back be­fore De Sil­va to be re-sen­tenced. 

Gar­cia was ar­rest­ed by po­lice while walk­ing along Duke Street in Port-of-Spain, around 10.45 am, on Thurs­day morn­ing. 

Un­der Sec­tion 98 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences, per­sons caught wear­ing T&T De­fence Force uni­forms or cloth­ing with sim­i­lar ap­pear­ance, with­out the per­mis­sion of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, face a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $200 fine. 

Dur­ing his brief ap­pear­ance, Gar­cia ad­mit­ted that he knew that wear­ing the cloth­ing is il­le­gal but claimed that he on­ly wear­ing it at home and had to sud­den­ly leave when he was ar­rest­ed. 

As part of her sen­tence, De Sil­va or­dered the po­lice to de­stroy the cloth­ing. 

Gar­cia’s case comes a month af­ter Isa­iah Pierre, a Care­nage res­i­dent, filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al claim chal­leng­ing a pres­i­den­tial le­gal no­tice from 1984, which pro­hibits the im­por­ta­tion of “cam­ou­flage pat­tern ma­te­r­i­al”. 

Pierre’s lawyers are con­tend­ing that Par­lia­ment and not the Pres­i­dent should have made such a de­ter­mi­na­tion. 

They al­so claim that the le­gal no­tice was too broad and sweep­ing in its ef­fect as even cam­ou­flage pat­terns, not used by the T&T De­fence Force, on items such as women’s high heeled boots were al­so pro­hib­it­ed. 

Pierre’s case is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran on April 6.  

Reporter: Derek Achong