SOCIAL media exploded yesterday with reports suggesting that a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidate had been held in a police spot check with thousands of blank voter identification cards.

The message, claiming that the St James candidate and a JLP activist had been arrested Friday night after police stopped and searched the motor vehicle in which they were travelling was blasted across cyberspace via BlackBerry messenger service, email and the social networking site Facebook.

The messages claimed that the police had found the blank voter ID cards — numbering between 1,500 and 18,000 — in the trunk of the car. The messages also alleged that the candidate had been questioned and released and the activist detained.

But when checked yesterday, the police told the Sunday Observer that exhaustive checks had turned up nothing to substantiate reports of any such incident.

"The prospective candidate named in the rumours was interviewed by senior police officers with his representatives and has denied ever being searched by the police or his involvement in any impropriety," read a press release issued by the Director of Communications of the Jamaica Constabulary Force Karl Angell.

"After exhaustive debriefing of officers, no evidence can be found at this time of any police officer who might have been involved in this alleged incident," the release also noted.

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