The es­tab­lish­ment of a Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU) with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in 2020 was wel­comed as a ma­jor step in ad­dress­ing de­fi­cien­cies in the po­lice’s han­dling of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es.

How­ev­er, while there has been some progress, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty’s (PCA) re­cent­ly re­leased Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Re­port 2024 has ex­posed sev­er­al dis­turb­ing in­stances of un­der-polic­ing in­volv­ing spous­es and girl­friends of po­lice of­fi­cers.

The re­port is a damn­ing in­dict­ment of the TTPS, an en­ti­ty that al­ready had an im­per­fect track record with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es. It high­lights sev­er­al in­stances where women were sub­ject­ed to ex­treme bru­tal­i­ty at the hands of their po­lice spous­es/part­ners. In some of the cas­es, for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons, the vic­tims re­fused to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against their abusers.

These rev­e­la­tions come on top of the many re­ports over the years of women’s com­plaints be­ing ig­nored, usu­al­ly with fa­tal con­se­quences.

The PCA must be com­mend­ed, not on­ly for com­pil­ing the re­port but mak­ing a se­ries of rec­om­men­da­tions that should be act­ed up­on.

These in­clude the es­tab­lish­ment of a group sim­i­lar to the UK’s Strate­gic Sup­port Group (SSG) to re­view do­mes­tic abuse cas­es, the in­tro­duc­tion of a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in­ves­tiga­tive and pro­ce­dur­al man­u­al for po­lice of­fi­cers and the ac­tive use of the Na­tion­al Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Reg­is­ter.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy is the PCA’s rec­om­men­da­tion to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher that re­ports “be cor­rect­ly record­ed and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of such mat­ters must be giv­en a high lev­el of pri­or­i­ty.”

The re­port fur­ther states: “Con­sid­er­a­tion may be giv­en to cre­at­ing a stan­dard pol­i­cy which will out­line in de­tail the man­ner in which of­fi­cers must treat with a re­port of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, whether made via phone call or in per­son.”

The PCA’s re­port was re­leased just days af­ter the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA) host­ed the Pub­lic Con­sul­ta­tion on Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence – The Need for Greater Pro­tec­tion, bring­ing to­geth­er stake­hold­ers from var­i­ous fields to as­sess the de­fi­cien­cies in the jus­tice sys­tem in re­la­tion to han­dling do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­cus­sion, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour ref­er­enced the case of Saman­tha Isaacs, which was the fo­cus of a land­mark High Court rul­ing ear­li­er this year.

Isaacs made sev­er­al re­ports to the po­lice but no in­ves­ti­ga­tions or in­quiries were done and in De­cem­ber 2017, she was shot and killed by her abu­sive boyfriend, Kahriym Gar­cia.

Had it not been for the de­ter­mi­na­tion of Isaacs’ moth­er, Tot Lam­bkin, that case, like so many oth­ers, might have fad­ed in­to obliv­ion. Lam­bkin filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al claim seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the State’s fail­ure to pro­tect her daugh­ter and won, get­ting the jus­tice that Isaacs was de­nied dur­ing her life­time and bring­ing fo­cus to glar­ing short­com­ings in the ways do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es are han­dled.

The PCA’s re­port and the con­sul­ta­tions by the AG’s Of­fice are time­ly re­minders that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is a scourge yet to be prop­er­ly ad­dressed. They are ur­gent calls for ac­tion — are the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties pay­ing at­ten­tion?

Every time the po­lice, an of­fi­cer or the court fails to treat a case of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and ur­gency, there is the risk that a vic­tim will suf­fer the fate of Ms Isaacs and the many oth­ers who have been killed by their abusers.

To save lives, more ro­bust laws are need­ed and firmer com­mit­ments made to erad­i­cate this so­ci­etal scourge.