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Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Police killings on the rise....

The case for bodycams

by

Peter Christopher
1653 days ago
20200712

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

With an­oth­er six months in the year still to go, the num­ber of peo­ple killed by po­lice so far in T&T is pre­car­i­ous­ly close to its high­est fig­ure in the last decade.

The deaths of Joel Ja­cob, Is­rael Clin­ton and Noel Di­a­mond in Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, on June 27 saw that fig­ure rise to 43, and it may rise to 44 should an in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­clude that po­lice gun­fire killed Or­nel­la Greaves, a preg­nant moth­er of five from Beetham Gar­dens, when po­lice clashed with res­i­dents on June 30.

On­ly 2010, which saw 49 peo­ple killed by po­lice and 2014, which saw 46 peo­ple killed, have seen more peo­ple lose their lives at the hands, or rather the bul­lets, of po­lice of­fi­cers in T&T.

Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty David West con­firmed that since 2014 they had re­ceived 214 re­ports of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings which have lead to 156 in­ves­ti­ga­tions. About 20 per cent of those 214 re­ports took place this year alone.

The shoot­ing deaths of Ja­cob, Clin­ton and Di­a­mond were sig­nif­i­cant in that, un­like most oth­er in­ci­dents, it was caught on CCTV and the footage was avail­able to the pub­lic. That video footage which ap­pears to de­pict the men sur­ren­der­ing to po­lice be­fore be­ing fired was the cat­a­lyst for mas­sive demon­stra­tions in and around the city over a week ago, as well as the ap­par­ent uni­fi­ca­tion of ri­val gangs call­ing for jus­tice last week.

The re­cent po­lice killings have raised the ques­tion about the use of body-worn cam­eras by of­fi­cers.

On Tues­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said he had or­dered 1,000 body cam­eras, which he would man­date for use by task force mem­bers in the Port-of-Spain, West­ern, North­ern, North East­ern and Cen­tral di­vi­sions.

Po­lice body cam­era pro­gramme launched 3 years ago

Al­most three years ago, the pi­lot po­lice body cam­era pro­gramme was launched in T&T un­der then act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams.

Pri­or to last Tues­day’s an­nounce­ment, the over­all us­age and im­pact of the body cam­eras re­mained rel­a­tive­ly min­i­mal with re­spect to day-to-day polic­ing.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed that the body cam­eras were in use to an ex­tent by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), with the In­ter-Agency Task Force among the units util­is­ing the de­vice. This would put T&T ahead of Ja­maica, who de­spite al­so hav­ing the equip­ment for years, had up to last month not seen their po­lice of­fi­cers equipped with the cam­eras.

In a press con­fer­ence a few weeks ago, Grif­fith con­firmed that 180 body cam­eras were in use by the Po­lice Ser­vice. He was re­spond­ing to claims by the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, af­ter an­oth­er al­leged ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing in June, that the cam­eras were not in use. With on­ly 180 body cam­eras cur­rent­ly avail­able to the Po­lice Ser­vice, this means in a force which has over 6,500 of­fi­cers, less than three per cent of them can ac­tu­al­ly be equipped with the cam­eras.

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, that’s not the on­ly chal­lenge. The body cam­eras have cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions and, as such, he pre­ferred the footage pro­vid­ed by mount­ed cam­eras on the po­lice ve­hi­cles.

He said mount­ed cam­eras give a wider view and it pro­vides re­al-time video footage fed back to the op­er­a­tional com­mand cen­tre. “That means those 100 ve­hi­cles pa­trolling 24 hours a day we are able to pa­trol and mon­i­tor every­thing that is fed back to the op­er­a­tional com­mand cen­tre in re­al-time in con­trast to the body cam­eras. The body cam­eras are some­thing that is done af­ter the fact.”

In the con­tentious shoot­ing in Mor­vant, how­ev­er, while the po­lice ve­hi­cles in­volved were equipped with mount­ed cam­eras, they were re­port­ed­ly fac­ing the op­po­site di­rec­tion from where the shootout took place.

CCTV footage
from Mor­vant

Ques­tions have al­so been raised about whether the footage cap­tured by the cam­era can as­sist the of­fi­cers in de­ter­min­ing what ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred.

• From Page 8

Grif­fith, com­ment­ing on the footage, said it was un­clear from the video if any of the sus­pects made an at­tempt to reach for a firearm be­fore the of­fi­cers fired.

“We au­to­mat­i­cal­ly see­ing one per­son put his hand in the air and then af­ter he is no longer there. We do not know what hap­pened with the third per­son who was in the back­seat, we do not know what he did. We do not know how many po­lice of­fi­cers fired, who fired,” said Grif­fith in a press con­fer­ence over a week ago.

Oth­er le­gal ex­perts stat­ed that based on the record­ing, there were clear par­al­lels in the footage and what was stat­ed in the po­lice re­port. How­ev­er, there was un­cer­tain­ty whether any of the ve­hi­cle’s oc­cu­pants made a threat­en­ing mo­tion be­fore the of­fi­cers opened fire on them.

If po­lice of­fi­cers in the Mor­vant sce­nario had been wear­ing the body cam­eras, ex­perts said, some of them would have been in a po­si­tion to record such ac­tion by the slain men.

On Tues­day, Grif­fith con­firmed he called for the ad­di­tion­al cam­eras to pro­tect his of­fi­cers from false ac­cu­sa­tions.

He said, “The rea­son I want to push for body cam­eras more than any­one is for when my of­fi­cers are wrong­ful­ly ac­cused by the la­dy in the tow­el who makes the ac­cu­sa­tion be­cause we do know they have bion­ic eyes that see through walls and around cor­ners.”

Gargamel killed by
cops, rel­a­tive speaks

Maris­sa La Bor­de, the rel­a­tive of an­oth­er vic­tim of a po­lice shoot­ing Bil­ly Tou­s­saint, al­so called for the use of the body cam­eras in the wake of the three men’s deaths on June 30. Tou­s­saint, al­so known as “Bu­ju” or “Gargamel”, was killed by po­lice on June 11.

“The in­ci­dent from Mor­vant, it just brings back mem­o­ries of the 11th and that was just heart­break­ing for me,” said La Bor­de, who ex­plained her stance con­cern­ing body cam­eras as she made ref­er­ence to in­con­sis­ten­cies she saw in the po­lice ac­count of her un­cle’s death.

“Yes, be­cause you see now, if the po­lice wear­ing their body cam­eras, ac­tu­al­ly the com­mis­sion­er ref­er­ence it, the au­thor­i­ty could know well this per­son was an in­no­cent man and they can­not plant any­thing on any­body who is in­no­cent,” she said.

“I not vex with the po­lice if they find some­body who want­ed and yet they was greet­ed by gun­fire what­ev­er and they get what they get, I wouldn’t be vex for that.

“But in­no­cent peo­ple who don’t know any­thing about that life?”

La Bor­de said the rel­a­tives of the Mor­vant vic­tims have reached out to her to do a joint march against po­lice killings.

Body­cams hold po­lice,
pub­lic ac­count­able

While most have ap­pealed for the use of the body cam­eras as a means to pro­tect the pub­lic from po­lice mis­deeds, re­tired New York Po­lice De­part­ment Sargeant Chris Traumer con­firmed it could al­so serve to pro­tect the of­fi­cers from ac­cu­sa­tions if they are switched on.

“You should have it on just in case some­one says any­thing, any type of al­le­ga­tion. It pro­tects you al­so. It holds both sides ac­count­able be­cause peo­ple know that once that cam­era on they are less like­ly to make al­le­ga­tions,” he said.

He added, how­ev­er, that wit­ness­es be­come more re­luc­tant to speak to of­fi­cers with the cam­era in op­er­a­tion.

“You’re sup­posed to turn it on once you re­spond to a job. Some­times they don’t turn it on, but it sup­posed to be, es­pe­cial­ly in a heavy job like a rob­bery or bur­glary,” said Traumer, who ex­plained that of­fi­cers would of­ten have to ac­count for their de­ci­sion to switch off the cam­era pri­or to en­gag­ing the pub­lic.

“I know there are reper­cus­sions for the guys that shut it off, they hold them ac­count­able, like hey, why did you shut it off? Es­pe­cial­ly when both (of­fi­cers) shut it off. Or three or four,” said Traumer, who ad­mit­ted that he him­self was not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to wear the cam­era dur­ing his time in the NYPD.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira, mean­while, has ex­pressed con­cern about the use of the cam­era.

“The fact of the mat­ter is, you have in­stances where the cam is switched off. So what ac­tu­al­ly tran­spired be­comes the word of the po­lice of­fi­cer ver­sus the word of the ar­rest­ed per­son or the vic­tim in an en­counter with the po­lice. So that is the main prob­lem that has been en­coun­tered with it in the Unit­ed States, where the of­fi­cer can be wear­ing the cam but it is in fact switched off or it was in­op­er­a­tive at the time,” said Figuera.

police officer killed


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