RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookaj@Guardian.co.tt

The num­ber of peo­ple killed by po­lice in the last year has risen by 86 per cent, a fig­ure that is of con­cern to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

For this year, 43 peo­ple have al­ready been killed by the po­lice, the ma­jor­i­ty be­ing Afro-Trinida­di­ans.

Trends show the killings have oc­curred pri­mar­i­ly in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion and stemmed from 32 shoot­ing in­ci­dents be­tween Jan­u­ary to June.

There have been mul­ti­ple killings aris­ing out of sin­gle in­ci­dents, such as the one which oc­curred on Fri­day in­volv­ing Joel Ja­cob, Is­rael Clin­ton and Noel Di­a­mond, all of whom were shot dead by of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force and the Guard and Emer­gency Branch.

Sta­tis­tics ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia show the 86 per cent in­creased in po­lice-re­lat­ed killings for this year com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.

The sta­tis­tics al­so show a 60 per cent in­crease in po­lice-re­lat­ed killings be­tween 2018 and 2019.

This three-year rise in po­lice-re­lat­ed deaths has been of con­cern to the di­rec­tor of the PCA David West.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, West said the PCA was con­cerned with every po­lice-in­volved fa­tal and non-fa­tal shoot­ing.

“There is a stand­ing pol­i­cy since I as­sumed di­rec­tor­ship of the PCA that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is ini­ti­at­ed in­to every po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing fa­tal and non-fa­tal. To date, there have been 32 in­ci­dents of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings. Out of those 32 in­ci­dents, there have been 43 vic­tims,” he said.

Asked whether he was con­cerned about pos­si­ble cov­er-ups, West as­sured that full, fair and thor­ough in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tions are be­ing con­duct­ed in­to all re­port­ed in­ci­dents of al­leged po­lice mis­con­duct.

“The PCA is al­so con­scious that we do not pre-empt the out­come of these in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Our in­quiries look at all the cir­cum­stances and whether the use of force by of­fi­cers was jus­ti­fied and pro­por­tion­ate in each of these in­stances. Up­on the con­clu­sion of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the au­thor­i­ty makes an as­sess­ment and forms an opin­ion as to whether or not the sub­ject mat­ter of the com­plaint has been sub­stan­ti­at­ed,” he said.

Un­der Sec­tion 44 (2) of the PCA Act, the Au­thor­i­ty would then rec­om­mend whether con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to pros­e­cute any per­son for a crim­i­nal of­fence.

“The rec­om­men­da­tion is then for­ward­ed to the DPP and to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion,” he said.

Asked whether he saw the video show­ing the Mor­vant shoot­ing, West said, “The PCA is aware of the video that has been cir­cu­lat­ing in so­cial me­dia. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been ini­ti­at­ed. The mat­ter will be ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and up­on con­clu­sion, if war­rant­ed rec­om­men­da­tions will be made to the rel­e­vant bod­ies.”

Asked what could be done to en­sure that law and or­der are fol­lowed at all times by po­lice of­fi­cers, West said, “The ‘use of force’ pol­i­cy of any po­lice ser­vice is an es­sen­tial tool in help­ing of­fi­cers re­spond to po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous and chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions. This, how­ev­er, must be rea­son­able, ap­pro­pri­ate and pro­por­tion­ate.”

He not­ed that law en­force­ment of­fi­cers should, as far as prac­ti­ca­ble, ap­ply non-vi­o­lent means be­fore re­sort­ing to us­ing force when car­ry­ing out their du­ties.

“In the event that they must re­sort to force, on­ly the min­i­mum force nec­es­sary to achieve the re­quired ob­jec­tive ought to be em­ployed. This is why the PCA has been ad­vo­cat­ing for the use of tasers as a means of a non-lethal weapon. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this is why the PCA pro­motes the use of body-worn cam­eras (BWCs) and ve­hi­cle dash cam­eras,” he added.

He not­ed that the use of body cam­eras was an im­por­tant tool “with the po­ten­tial to en­hance trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty and to en­gen­der greater trust in po­lice of­fi­cers.”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist: It’s eco­nom­ic hard­ship

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said eco­nom­ic pres­sures could have con­tributed to the in­crease in po­lice-re­lat­ed killings.

“As you know many peo­ple lose their jobs and there is a lot of eco­nom­ic hard­ship. We have lots of suf­fer­ing with­in the pop­u­la­tion and what this trans­lates to is high­er lev­els of crime and ag­gres­sion. If that hap­pens you will find a high­er lev­el of con­fronta­tion be­tween the po­lice and cit­i­zens so one of the un­for­tu­nate con­se­quences of this could be a high­er lev­el of po­lice killings,” Seep­er­sad said.

He ex­plained that the com­mis­sion­er’s pol­i­cy of one shot one kill could have em­bold­ened of­fi­cers.

“There was a time that he (CoP) used the phrase, one-shot one kill but we must stay away from that type of lan­guage. It en­cour­ages ag­gres­sion and that is not what the po­lice ser­vice is about. There are lots of good of­fi­cers out there who pro­tect and serve but at the same time, giv­en the na­ture of po­lice work, they could de­vel­op an ag­gres­sive stance in deal­ing with the pub­lic.

“This type of ag­gres­sion could be en­cour­aged by a per­son in au­thor­i­ty and it could re­sult in high­er lev­els of ag­gres­sion among po­lice of­fi­cers,” he said.

Asked whether he was con­cerned about pos­si­ble cov­er-ups, Seep­er­sad said, “We have to trust that the mech­a­nisms that are in place to in­ves­ti­gate sit­u­a­tions, ac­tu­al­ly work.”

He not­ed that cu­mu­la­tive­ly the po­lice could have had thou­sands of en­coun­ters with mem­bers of the pub­lic and hav­ing 30-plus po­lice-re­lat­ed deaths sig­ni­fy that the po­lice were heed­ing the call by Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith to ex­er­cise wis­dom and dis­cre­tion in their deal­ings with the pub­lic.

He not­ed that T&T was still far ahead when com­pared to Caribbean neigh­bours, not­ing that apart from Ja­maica and Guyana, T&T was the on­ly Caribbean coun­try that had in­de­pen­dent over­sight via the PCA, in­to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Seep­er­sad al­so said even though the TTPS had a use of force pol­i­cy and ad­e­quate train­ing for of­fi­cers, this will not al­ways be fol­lowed.

“There is no amount of train­ing that will re­al­ly pre­pare them for the re­al­i­ties and you don’t know if an of­fi­cer might be trig­ger-hap­py, don’t know if they might be anx­ious, they might be scared dur­ing an en­counter and they re­act in a way in which the lev­el of force might be ex­ces­sive,” Seep­er­sad said.

Mean­while, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said the footage cir­cu­lat­ing about the Mor­vant shoot­ings, “does not con­firm or de­ny any­thing.”

“It would, how­ev­er, be used in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I do not act on spec­u­la­tion or per­cep­tion, but ev­i­dence, based on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The TTPS is in­ves­ti­gat­ing as we do with all po­lice-re­lat­ed shoot­ings. I am al­so pro­vid­ing all that is re­quired to the PCA in their in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion on this mat­ter. When these in­ves­ti­ga­tions and find­ings are com­plet­ed, I would then act and in­form the pub­lic ac­cord­ing­ly.”