Eliz­abeh Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Res­i­dents of Black Rock, To­ba­go, are com­plain­ing of ex­ces­sive force, poor at­ti­tudes, and mis­trust be­tween the com­mu­ni­ty and law en­force­ment.

They made the claims on Thurs­day night dur­ing a po­lice town hall meet­ing at the Black Rock Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

Some res­i­dents said the trust is­sues make them hes­i­tant to re­port crimes or even con­sid­er work­ing with the po­lice.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Earl Elie told the com­mu­ni­ty it would take time for trust to be re­stored.

He told the au­di­ence, “What was cre­at­ed in years can­not be fixed overnight. It takes team­work, com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion.”

How­ev­er, res­i­dents re­mained scep­ti­cal, say­ing trust must be re­built through bet­ter at­ti­tudes and ac­tions from po­lice of­fi­cers.

One woman claimed she was pep­per-sprayed af­ter ques­tion­ing po­lice about her broth­er’s in­ter­ro­ga­tion.

The res­i­dent asked, “Is it a crime for civil­ians to ask po­lice of­fi­cers ques­tions when they come to do their checks?” 

She said, “There are of­fi­cers with a lot of at­ti­tude. When you come to them, the first thing they want to rough you up ...”

She said she was pep­per-sprayed dur­ing a heat­ed ex­change.

But in re­sponse, Elie asked the au­di­ence, “If I’m do­ing an ar­rest, do I need to ex­plain that to 15 per­sons when they come?

“Do I need to stop, which could be a vi­o­lent sit­u­a­tion? I’m not say­ing the po­lice won’t ex­plain, but there is the ap­pro­pri­ate time and place for it.”

Oth­ers al­leged of­fi­cers bul­lied them when they tried to file re­ports, with one in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a man be­ing thrown on­to a car, shat­ter­ing its glass.

For­mer chief sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles called on the po­lice to en­gage with young peo­ple di­rect­ly. He said town meet­ings would on­ly im­pact the com­mu­ni­ty if they reached those most vul­ner­a­ble.

“The re­al­i­ty to­day is that many of our in­sti­tu­tions are not work­ing as ef­fi­cient as they used to for all kinds of rea­sons. Some of the old de­signs may not work be­cause of where we are to­day,” Charles said.

The com­mu­ni­ty al­so raised broad­er is­sues, in­clud­ing theft and an in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

A pas­tor, Will Fran­cis, said his church, Di­vine Break­through Em­pow­er­ment Min­istries, was tar­get­ed and robbed three years ago, and there has been no up­date since. He said his mem­bers want to work with the po­lice to re­duce rob­beries and pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ties from crim­i­nals.

Just four months ago, Black Rock, To­ba­go, was rocked by a quadru­ple mur­der.

And fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, res­i­dents re­mained trau­ma­tised, with some ad­mit­ting to hav­ing no faith in the po­lice ser­vice.

Thurs­day night’s meet­ing was par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant as it marked the first ma­jor pub­lic en­gage­ment for To­ba­go’s new po­lice lead­er­ship—ACP Os­wain Subero and Elie.

Both men took the po­si­tion two months ago af­ter ACP Col­lis Hazel and Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk were re­as­signed to Trinidad.

Al­though the ACP was ab­sent, the res­i­dent still raised all their con­cerns with Elie, ASP Dirk John and ASP Lee Tang.