Ak­ile Si­mon

?Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert has ex­tend­ed his con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of three kid­nap­pers shot and killed by po­lice in Carlsen Field on Wednes­day. The men, who hailed from Mar­cano Quar­ry, Laven­tille, were iden­ti­fied yes­ter­day by their rel­a­tives at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Com­plex, be­fore au­top­sies were per­formed on their bod­ies. Their rel­a­tives re­fused to speak with re­porters. The men are Quamie George, Wayne Rogers and Sher­von "Pa­pi" Slay­ers. Speak­ing at a pre­sen­ta­tion of medals and cer­tifi­cates cer­e­mo­ny for of­fi­cers who per­formed dur­ing the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er Philbert said, he was sor­ry for the cir­cum­stances in which the vic­tims' met their deaths.

Philbert said killing sus­pects "is not en­tire­ly the way we want to go, but, if we are forced, then we would have to go that way." He added: "The re­gret­table part is that we had to de­fend our­selves in the strongest fash­ion which re­sult­ed in the demise of three young men. "I am hap­py to know that the of­fi­cers were not in­jured and the hostage was re­leased with­out harm." He said de­spite po­lice los­ing a "lit­tle ground" in the fight against crime, of­fi­cers must be on the "at­tack­ing" side. Philbert said of­fi­cers charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty must act above board, when con­fronting armed sus­pects. Philbert al­so com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers who were in­volved in the op­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly act­ing ASP John­ny Abra­ham of the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau, for his role dur­ing the con­fronta­tion and res­cue of kid­nap jew­eller Im­ran Mo­hammed Khan.

He al­so called on oth­er of­fi­cers to pre­pare them­selves to con­front brazen crim­i­nals who had no re­gard for the law. Phlib­ert said a sus­pect was de­tained in con­nec­tion with the killing of mur­der ac­cused Pe­ter Gar­cia who was shot dead while hand­cuffed and in po­lice cus­tody out­side the Rio Claro Mag­is­trates' Court a few weeks ago. He al­so con­firmed an in­ci­dent ear­li­er this week at Ed­ward and Duke Streets in Port-of-Spain where Colfire em­ploy­ee, Lan­der Rod­ney, was shot and wound­ed by a bul­let which was ac­ci­den­tal­ly dis­charged by a po­lice of­fi­cer in a marked mov­ing po­lice ve­hi­cle. Philbert apol­o­gised to Rod­ney and stu­dents who were present, adding an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was tak­ing place.