Derek Achong

As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice Joanne Archie says po­lice of­fi­cers can refuse to com­ply with un­law­ful in­struc­tions of se­nior of­fi­cers. She made the state­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day's dai­ly press brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain. Archie's state­ment was in re­sponse to yes­ter­day's T&T Guardian sto­ry which stat­ed that ju­nior of­fi­cers were be­ing in­struct­ed by se­nior of­fi­cers to make ar­rests dur­ing the state of emer­gency with­out be­ing in pos­ses­sion of suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence. The sto­ry quot­ed sec­re­tary of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Sgt Michael Seales as say­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion re­ceived sev­er­al com­plaints by of­fi­cers of "ques­tion­able in­struc­tions" from se­nior of­fi­cers per­tain­ing to the ar­rest of cit­i­zens dur­ing the state of emer­gency.

Yes­ter­day, Archie said: "Each of­fi­cer is ob­vi­ous­ly aware of the re­quire­ments that must be sat­is­fied be­fore an ar­rest and le­gal­i­ty of in­struc­tions giv­en to them. "This af­fords them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to refuse to com­ply with un­law­ful in­struc­tions," she added. "To date no com­plaint has been made re­gard­ing these in­struc­tions to the ser­vice's ex­ec­u­tive or to any first di­vi­sion of­fi­cer." On Mon­day, 21 res­i­dents of Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain, who were ar­rest­ed and charged un­der the An­ti-Gang Act were freed af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard told Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against the men to sus­tain the charges. Archie said of­fi­cers were aware that the state of emer­gency had not sus­pend­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion of the law.

"We (po­lice) must en­sure when we de­tain per­sons, we have the rea­son­able cause to do so and with­in the con­fines of the law," she said. "We must en­sure there is ev­i­dence be­fore crim­i­nal charges are laid." Archie said the Po­lice Ser­vice Le­gal Unit was avail­able to pro­vide ad­vice to of­fi­cers per­tain­ing to le­gal is­sues in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties. The Le­gal Unit, es­tab­lished in 2007, com­pris­es of trained po­lice of­fi­cers who are al­so qual­i­fied lawyers. Archie said there was at least one mem­ber of this unit as­signed to each po­lice di­vi­sion to pro­vide le­gal ad­vice to of­fi­cers.

Po­lice Stats

Since the an­nounce­ment of the state of Emer­gency on Au­gust 21, po­lice have ar­rest­ed a to­tal of 2,102 peo­ple, seized 89 il­le­gal firearms and 12,202 rounds of as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion.

Gang-re­lat­ed-447

Drug-re­lat­ed-391

Homi­cide-48

Oth­er of­fences-45

Se­ri­ous of­fences -461

Break­ing cur­few-119

In­quires-138

Traf­fic of­fences-400