More than $ 1 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey has been spent to pur­chase close to 1,160 body cam­eras for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which well-placed sources say are not be­ing put to prop­er use by of­fi­cers.

With the re­cent po­lice killings in the last week, cit­i­zens have been clam­our­ing for in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence that led to the death of three young men from the Beetham and an­oth­er man from Mor­vant.

But, so far, none seems to be forth­com­ing from the body cam­eras, the bulk of which was re­ceived in March of this year and dis­trib­uted to en­sure trans­paren­cy in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

It is un­clear whether the of­fi­cers in­volved used body cam­eras dur­ing the in­ci­dent, but po­lice of­fi­cers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) will be re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on the footage from the CCTV cam­eras in that area to form part of their ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to these killings.

Po­lice sources said the cam­eras pur­chased for the TTPS that cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1,000 each were dis­trib­uted to the In­ter-Agency Task Force(IATF), the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB), and the Emer­gency Re­sponse Team.

The sources said the cam­eras are there, but few of­fi­cers are util­is­ing them when on pa­trol.

The body cam­eras are worn by the of­fi­cers to cap­ture video and au­dio ev­i­dence when they are at­tend­ing to in­ci­dents in­volv­ing the pub­lic. They are used to im­prove of­fi­cer safe­ty, in­crease ev­i­dence qual­i­ty, re­duce civil­ian com­plaints, and re­duce li­a­bil­i­ty to the agency, in this case, the TTPS and the State.

There are now re­newed calls for the of­fi­cers to use the body cam­eras more ef­fec­tive­ly and fre­quent­ly fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 2 killing of Tris­tan “Rat­ty” Springer in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, and lat­er that same day, three oth­er men were shot dead by po­lice in down­town Port-of-Spain–Isa­iah Roberts, 16, Leonar­do Williams, 17 and Fabi­an Richards, 22. A fourth man was shot, but sur­vived, while two oth­ers were held at the scene.

Mor­vant res­i­dents told the me­dia that po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the Cipri­ani Av­enue home of Springer and or­dered two oth­er peo­ple present in the house to go out­side. They claim they heard sev­er­al gun­shots and Springer was tak­en out of the house by of­fi­cers to the hos­pi­tal, where he lat­er died. Po­lice claimed Springer shot at them first.

The sec­ond in­ci­dent hours lat­er in­volv­ing the Beetham men, sparked mas­sive protests in East Port-of-Spain on Mon­day. The three sur­vivors were re­leased with­out charge.

Crime Scene Investigators at the scene of the police-involved shooting of four men on Independence Square, Port-of-Spain, last week Saturday.

JOSIAH PAUL

Since then, one of the men who sur­vived the shoot­ing in­ci­dent has dis­pelled claims by the po­lice that there was any firearm in the car.

Iden­ti­fied on­ly as Je­re­mi­ah, he said that the on­ly weapon in the car was a switch­blade and that po­lice opened fire on the car mo­ments af­ter ram­ming the car oc­cu­pied by the six men near Cha­con Street and In­de­pen­dence Square. The men, au­top­sies re­vealed, were shot in the back.

The po­lice of­fi­cers, mean­while, claimed that the men opened fire on them dur­ing the chase. Rel­a­tives of the de­ceased claim their loved ones were in­no­cent vic­tims.

With claims of ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings weigh­ing heav­i­ly, the is­sue of of­fi­cers wear­ing body cam­eras has be­come more crit­i­cal.

The in­ci­dents are just two of many po­lice killings to come un­der in­tense scruti­ny in re­cent years, re­sult­ing in the pub­lic de­mand­ing in­creased trans­paren­cy.

In March, 1,000 body cam­eras were ac­quired by the TTPS through the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds laud­ed their ac­qui­si­tion say­ing they would in­crease trans­paren­cy.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate on March 16, he said, “The TTPS is cur­rent­ly in the dis­tri­b­u­tion phase of body cam­eras, hav­ing re­cent­ly ac­quired an ad­di­tion­al 1,000 units for use by of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice…

“Pri­or to the ac­qui­si­tion, the TTPS al­ready had in its ar­moury, so to speak, 160 func­tion­al body cam­eras in use. Al­to­geth­er, the po­lice ser­vice now has 1,160 body cam­eras and these have and are be­ing de­ployed to max­i­mum strate­gic ef­fort across the po­lice ser­vice in the fight against crime and the spir­it of trans­paren­cy.”

Hinds gave the as­sur­ance that “more are in con­tem­pla­tion and we will con­tin­ue to ex­pand the use of body cam­eras. The am­bi­tion is to make it a rou­tine part of the pol­i­cy.”

Ac­cord­ing to the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice web­site, of­fi­cer body-worn cam­eras are small de­vices that record in­ter­ac­tions be­tween com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and po­lice of­fi­cers.

It stat­ed that video and au­dio record­ings from the cam­eras can be used by law en­force­ment to demon­strate trans­paren­cy to their com­mu­ni­ties, and ob­ser­va­tions, to doc­u­ment state­ments and de­ter un­pro­fes­sion­al, il­le­gal, and in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iours by law en­force­ment and the pub­lic.

“The tech­nol­o­gy con­sists of the cam­era, which is typ­i­cal­ly worn on the of­fi­cer’s uni­form, with a for­ward-fac­ing view­able area… There are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent types of cam­eras with dif­fer­ing op­tions, in­clud­ing user con­trols such as push-to-record, touch-screen con­trols, video and au­dio feed, and play­back in the field. The video ev­i­dence is up­loaded through a dock­ing sta­tion on a lo­cal stor­age de­vice (eg serv­er) or through an on­line web-based dig­i­tal me­dia stor­age plat­form where the ev­i­dence can be en­crypt­ed and man­aged,” the web­site added.

Flashbak in 2020: Then commissioner of police Gary Griffith showing one of the body cameras belonging to the TTPS.

Abraham Diaz

‘It must be part of the stan­dard

op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure’

De­spite claims from sources that the body cam­eras are not be­ing used for their in­tend­ed pur­pose, the TTPS’ Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer ASP Sheri­don Hill in­sist­ed that they are be­ing used.

“The cam­eras were is­sued to a num­ber of dif­fer­ent sec­tions in the po­lice ser­vice. IATF, GB, High­way Pa­trol, Op­er­a­tional Com­mand, and a cou­ple of oth­er units. Those are the main units and some of the oth­er task force and so on,” Hill told the Sun­day Guardian on Thurs­day.

Asked about the stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure and if the use of body cam­eras was man­dat­ed by a pol­i­cy so that if of­fi­cers en­counter a cer­tain sce­nario they are re­quired to turn it on, he said, “Well, I def­i­nite­ly have to get back to you on that. I’ll get back to you on that.”

He lat­er said that there was a de­part­men­tal or­der im­ple­ment­ed in 2017.

“There are poli­cies. There are op­er­a­tional and tac­ti­cal poli­cies,” he as­sured. But did not give any specifics about the pol­i­cy.

When asked if of­fi­cers are ad­her­ing to the poli­cies, he said, “Yes, as far as I am aware, they are be­ing ad­hered to.”

It was for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith who or­dered the 1,000 po­lice body cam­eras ob­tained by the TTPS in March.

He said the TTPS lead­er­ship, un­der his tenure, re­alised that they need­ed body cam­eras to en­sure that they could pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion re­quired to as­cer­tain if po­lice of­fi­cers abused their au­thor­i­ty, or if po­lice of­fi­cers were wrong­ful­ly ac­cused.

He said the man­date for po­lice of­fi­cers was that “if at any time, you come out of your po­lice ve­hi­cles and you’re on a pa­trol, you’re in a road­block, you’re is­su­ing a road­block, you’re is­su­ing a war­rant, you come un­der hos­tile fire, you are to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly turn it on. That was the con­cept that we had there. Af­ter I left, that was shut down.

“We ac­tu­al­ly heard Mr Hill, who is the com­mu­ni­ca­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Mr Ja­cob, use a very fee­ble and un­ac­cept­able state­ment to say you can’t force po­lice of­fi­cers to wear body cam­eras be­cause there’s no law that man­dates it,” Grif­fith said in an in­ter­view last Thurs­day.

“Had this been part of the stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure and the de­part­men­tal or­der I had set out, then it would have shed a lot of light on what would have hap­pened on Sat­ur­day morn­ing in down­town Port-of-Spain. It may have not caused per­sons to re­act, based on the per­cep­tion that the po­lice of­fi­cers op­er­ate in a high-hand­ed man­ner.”

Michelle John, grandmother of police shooting victim Isaiah Roberts, at a candle light vigil at the corner of Chacon Street and Independence Square, Port-of-Spain, on Tuesday.

KERWIN PIERRE

PCA in­ves­ti­ga­tions

The fa­tal Port-of-Spain po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing came days af­ter the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) com­plet­ed two high-pro­file in­ves­ti­ga­tions where the find­ings sug­gest­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers were re­spon­si­ble for the April 2022 death of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Clarence Gilkes in Rich Plain,

Diego Mar­tin, as well as the June 2020 death of preg­nant moth­er Or­nel­la Greaves in Beetham.

Ini­tial­ly, when PC Gilkes was shot dead on April 22, the po­lice ser­vice claimed a civil­ian was re­spon­si­ble. In re­sponse to claims by res­i­dents that it was a col­league who shot and killed PC Gilkes, the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob ini­tial­ly shot down such sug­ges­tions.

“That is a lot of hog­wash in re­la­tion to the cir­cum­stances in which the in­ci­dent hap­pened…Our in­ves­ti­ga­tions will look at all an­gles but the of­fi­cers who were present had giv­en how every­thing had oc­curred…Our of­fi­cer is shot in his neck from the front and we are talk­ing about friend­ly fire? This is what we are talk­ing about? We have to get se­ri­ous in our coun­try in re­la­tion to this, as we are con­stant­ly giv­ing mer­it to per­sons who are in­volved in ac­tiv­i­ties in our land,” Ja­cob said on the day of the shoot­ing.

The civil­ian ac­cused by the po­lice even­tu­al­ly turned him­self over and was re­leased with­out charge.

The find­ings of the PCA re­port in­to the in­ci­dent found that a po­lice of­fi­cer shot PC Gilkes. It al­so found that mem­bers of the TTPS abused their pow­er, de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the Act­ing CoP.

“This in­ci­dent is one of the clear­est ex­am­ples of abuse of po­lice pow­er that the PCA has in­ves­ti­gat­ed to date,” a June 30 PCA re­lease said.

Or­nel­la Greaves’ killing

One day lat­er, on Ju­ly 1, the PCA re­vealed that Or­nel­la Greaves was al­so shot dead by a po­lice of­fi­cer dur­ing a protest in Beetham over the killing of three men in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, in 2020. The PCA rec­om­mend­ed crim­i­nal charges.

When asked about claims by res­i­dents that po­lice were re­spon­si­ble for Greaves’ death, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, on Ju­ly 7, 2020, sug­gest­ed po­lice of­fi­cers were not at fault.

“We have found video footage to show that when the un­for­tu­nate death of that la­dy in Beetham, we have video footage and you are look­ing around and there was ab­solute­ly no po­lice of­fi­cer or ve­hi­cle around that area for about three min­utes un­til that per­son, un­til a po­lice ve­hi­cle turned up,” Grif­fith had said dur­ing a week­ly TTPS me­dia brief­ing.

“When the in­di­vid­ual was on the ground there was no po­lice of­fi­cer around for sev­er­al min­utes be­fore they ar­rived.”

Oth­er re­cent high-pro­file po­lice killing cas­es

Joel Ap­pari­cio

In May 2014, un­armed 31-year-old Joel Ap­pari­cio was shot dead by a po­lice of­fi­cer while run­ning past a Re­al Street, San Juan jew­el­ry shop. He was go­ing to the San Juan Po­lice Sta­tion to make a re­port.

Ap­pari­cio was al­leged­ly shot in his chest, with­out warn­ing, by an of­fi­cer who was wait­ing for a col­league who was shop­ping.

Eye­wit­ness­es told the me­dia that the of­fi­cer who shot Ap­pari­cio was over­heard say­ing he shot the wrong man.

Ac­cord­ing to the PCA, their in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed and for­ward­ed to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard in 2015.

Trou Macaque killings

In Oc­to­ber 2018, five men were shot dead by po­lice of­fi­cers in Trou Macaque, Laven­tille.

Ac­cord­ing to eye­wit­ness re­ports, the five men–Sha­keem Fran­cois, Kadeem Phillip, Shan­dell St Clair, Mishack Dou­glas, and Nicholas Bark­er–were play­ing cards when they were con­front­ed by po­lice who opened fire.

Eye­wit­ness­es claimed that when the men were shot they all had their hands in the air.

Po­lice, how­ev­er, claimed that they were shot at first and re­turned fire.

They said they re­cov­ered two weapons from the scene.

Po­lice sources told me­dia that two of the vic­tims were sus­pects in a mur­der that oc­curred ear­li­er in the year.

A me­dia re­port claimed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tor found the gun­shot wounds sus­tained by the five vic­tims were cu­ri­ous.

“I have not seen this pat­tern of in­juries in any po­lice-re­lat­ed killings be­fore, it is very cu­ri­ous and un­usu­al,” the of­fi­cer said in a me­dia re­port.

Sources said that a very cred­i­ble wit­ness gave per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion in this par­tic­u­lar shoot­ing in­ci­dent.

Ac­cord­ing to the PCA, their in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed and for­ward­ed to the DPP in 2020.

Nao­mi Nel­son

In May 2019, 14-year-old Nao­mi Nel­son was shot dead in Big Yard, Care­nage.

Nao­mi was shot in her head dur­ing an al­leged po­lice shoot­ing with armed men.

Po­lice claimed that armed men opened fire on of­fi­cers who were on a night pa­trol.

Nao­mi was one of six peo­ple shot in the ex­change. Al­so killed were Keron Eve and Ka­reem Roberts.

The killings sparked protests in Care­nage, with some res­i­dents claim­ing the po­lice used ex­ces­sive force and abused their pow­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the PCA, their in­ves­ti­ga­tion is still on­go­ing.

Rochy­on Aster­man and Kris­t­ian Ser­ries

In Au­gust 2019, 29-year-old Kris­t­ian Ser­ries and 19-year-old Rochy­on Aster­man were shot dead by po­lice in San­ta Cruz.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, of­fi­cers from the now-de­funct Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team(SORT) were shot at by some­one from the ve­hi­cle in which Ser­ries and Aster­man were dri­ving. How­ev­er, some res­i­dents claimed that it was the of­fi­cers who opened fire on the wrong ve­hi­cle.

Ac­cord­ing to the PCA, their in­ves­ti­ga­tion is still on­go­ing.

Mor­vant killings

In what was prob­a­bly the most high-pro­file po­lice killings in re­cent years, three men–Joel Ja­cobs, Noel Di­a­mond, and Is­rael Moses Clin­ton–were shot dead by of­fi­cers in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, in June 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, they were on an ex­er­cise and af­ter stop­ping a car dri­ven by the three men, one of the pas­sen­gers got out and start­ed shoot­ing at them. Of­fi­cers claimed they found a pis­tol and am­mu­ni­tion in the ve­hi­cle. How­ev­er, the of­fi­cers’ claims were con­tra­dict­ed short­ly af­ter by a video show­ing a cou­ple of the men with their hands in the air, sur­ren­der­ing be­fore they were shot.

There was no footage to sup­port the claim that the po­lice were shot at first.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, there were wide­spread protests across East Port-of-Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, their in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed and for­ward­ed to the DPP in 2020 and a de­ter­mi­na­tion is yet to be made in this in­ci­dent.

Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, two sus­pects in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt died while in po­lice cus­tody.

Bal­con, the main sus­pect, died on Feb­ru­ary 8 at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. Of­fi­cers ini­tial­ly claimed that he was left co­matose af­ter sus­tain­ing in­juries in an es­cape at­tempt. How­ev­er, an au­top­sy found that he died from blunt force trau­ma. He suf­fered sev­er­al bro­ken ribs, in­ter­nal bleed­ing, brain frac­tures, bleed­ing to the brain, and dam­age to his right eye, legs, and shoul­ders.

Mor­ris al­so died in po­lice cus­tody from blunt force trau­ma. He died on Feb­ru­ary 1, but his death was re­port­ed two days lat­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the PCA, the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to their deaths were com­plet­ed and for­ward­ed to the DPP in 2021.

The num­bers

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2015 and the be­gin­ning of Ju­ly 2022, 231 peo­ple were fa­tal­ly killed by po­lice of­fi­cers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the PCA.

*In 2015, there were 17 po­lice killings;

*In 2016, there were 28 po­lice killings;

*In 2017, 36 po­lice killings;

*In 2018, 37 po­lice killings;

*In 2019, 32 po­lice killings;

*In 2020, 33 po­lice killings;

*In 2021, 32 po­lice killings;

*In 2022 so far, there have been 16 po­lice killings

Us­ing the 2021 sta­tis­tic, Trinidad and To­ba­go had a rate of 24.6 po­lice killings per mil­lion peo­ple. Com­par­a­tive­ly, in Cana­da, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 38.01 mil­lion peo­ple, there were 32 po­lice killings in 2021 and 36 po­lice killings in 2020. Us­ing the 2021 sta­tis­tic, Cana­da had a rate of 0.84 po­lice killings per mil­lion peo­ple.

In the Unit­ed States, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 329.5 mil­lion peo­ple, there were 1,055 po­lice killings in 2021 and 1,020 po­lice killings in 2020. Us­ing the 2021 sta­tis­tic, the Unit­ed States had a rate of 3.2 po­lice killings per mil­lion peo­ple.

In Aus­tralia, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 25.69 mil­lion peo­ple, 21 peo­ple were killed by po­lice in 2018. Us­ing the 2018 sta­tis­tic, Aus­tralia had a rate of 0.82 po­lice killings per mil­lion peo­ple in 2018; T&T had a rate of 26.44 po­lice killings per mil­lion that year.

In Eng­land and Wales, with 59.59 mil­lion peo­ple, three peo­ple were killed by po­lice in 2019. Us­ing that sta­tis­tic, Eng­land/Wales had a rate of 0.05 po­lice killings per mil­lion peo­ple in 2019; T&T had a rate of 22.87 po­lice killings per mil­lion that year.

While T&T’s rate of po­lice killings is high­er than those coun­tries, it is still be­low Ja­maica’s.

Be­tween 2015 and 2018, more than 500 peo­ple were killed by po­lice in Ja­maica.

In 2018, 137 peo­ple were killed by po­lice in the coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of 2.961 mil­lion peo­ple.

Us­ing the 2018 sta­tis­tic, Ja­maica had a rate of 46.27 po­lice killings per mil­lion peo­ple; T&T’s rate that year, as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, was 26.44 killings per mil­lion peo­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to Hu­man Rights Watch, Venezuela had 5,995 po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty killings in 2016 and 4,998 po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty killings in 2017.

There are no up­dat­ed fig­ures avail­able.