Melis­sa Doughty

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams says it is time for the po­lice to get tough with peo­ple who break the law.He made the com­ment yes­ter­day at a func­tion, host­ed by the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme in Port-of-Spain, in re­sponse to ques­tions about con­tin­u­ing protests by Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dents over the po­lice shoot­ing of Christo­pher Greaves.Res­i­dents of the area be­gan fiery protests on Sun­day evening af­ter Greaves, 23, was shot dead by po­lice.They con­tin­ued yes­ter­day along the East­ern Main Road, Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) and Beetham High­way, with res­i­dents block­ing the road­ways with de­bris, con­fronting po­lice and even throw­ing rocks and oth­er pieces of de­bris at ve­hi­cles along the PBR and the high­way.

Dur­ing one of sev­er­al con­fronta­tions be­tween law en­force­ment teams and res­i­dents, sol­diers fired shots in­to the air to dis­perse an an­gry crowd. In an­oth­er such con­fronta­tion, the po­lice used tear gas against the res­i­dents.Last night there was a tense calm in the com­mu­ni­ty as law en­force­ment of­fi­cers kept watch, hop­ing to pre­vent any fur­ther in­ci­dents.Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, say­ing the po­lice had to be "as co-op­er­a­tive as pos­si­ble in iden­ti­fy­ing and recog­nis­ing peo­ple's con­cern and their right to ex­er­cise their views and feel­ings to­wards mat­ters," Williams al­so said at some stage they al­so had to get tough dur­ing sit­u­a­tions like those.He added: "I think we are at that point, where I think we need to get ex­treme­ly tough."Give the clear sig­nal to the cit­i­zens: You have to fol­low the right way of bring­ing home your con­cerns. It is so wrong for peo­ple to be bring­ing their con­cerns to the in­con­ve­nience, and even by way of crim­i­nal­i­ty, against oth­er cit­i­zens. It is just wrong."As a so­ci­ety, T&T, can­not con­tin­ue to con­done such be­hav­iour by the cit­i­zens."

Williams said every­one spoke of rights but won­dered where were the rights of nor­mal cit­i­zens trav­el­ling along the Beetham High­way, the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and the East­ern Main Road whose ve­hi­cles were tar­get­ed by the Beetham Es­tate res­i­dents. He said he had no po­lice re­ports but knew of me­dia re­ports on the in­ci­dents, re­peat­ing that DCP Mervyn Richard­son had the lead on the mat­ter and he ex­pect­ed to be up­dat­ed lat­er yes­ter­day.Asked about what the tough mea­sures would be for res­i­dents who "step out of line," he said they should be what the law re­quired.

"If you block the road, ob­struct­ing the free pas­sage­way is an of­fence. It may not car­ry a mas­sive penal­ty but it is a crim­i­nal of­fence and you need to ex­er­cise the law," he said.

On the is­sue of protest­ing over an in­ci­dent, Williams said: "In our sys­tem, we are a civ­il so­ci­ety and I hear a lot of peo­ple speak about what is sup­posed to take place in a civ­il so­ci­ety but what is sup­posed to take place is fol­low­ing the rule of law."We have a sys­tem. If there is a sit­u­a­tion where a mem­ber of so­ci­ety is shot and killed, there is sup­posed to be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. We have a mech­a­nism of a Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty which has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter."And we have a sys­tem where we have an in­quest court, where a coro­ner sit­ting at an in­quest court will make a de­ter­mi­na­tion whether there is wrong­do­ing by the po­lice and, if so, the coro­ner will give the di­rec­tion in re­la­tion to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion out of the in­quest."And that is the sys­tem we op­er­ate in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and civ­il so­ci­ety."It can­not be one where if you feel un­com­fort­able with a sit­u­a­tion, your neigh­bour has a gun and you find that the neigh­bour should not be shot and killed in a con­fronta­tion, that you would protest. That can­not be right."Dur­ing yes­ter­day's cer­e­mo­ny, ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$150,000 worth of ICT equip­ment, fund­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, in­clud­ing 45 com­put­ers, 12 high-res­o­lu­tion print­ers and soft­ware, was hand­ed over to the CSP, which is head­ed by Gre­go­ry Sloane-Seale.