For a pop­u­la­tion that is renowned for hav­ing a nine-day mem­o­ry, it is note­wor­thy that four months af­ter the trag­ic death of Joshua Sama­roo and the se­ri­ous in­jury of his girl­friend Ka­ia Sealy in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing, the mat­ter con­tin­ues to grab na­tion­al head­lines.

In fact, it is ar­guable whether any oth­er mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion in the last decade has pro­voked the pub­lic's ire as much as the Jan­u­ary 20 shoot­ing death of Sama­roo, who was in a crashed car in St Au­gus­tine with Sealy at the time of the con­tro­ver­sial in­ci­dent.

The pub­lic's in­ter­est is part­ly due to the cou­ple be­ing young and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Trinidad and To­ba­go's two ma­jor eth­nic groups. But the sto­ry was pushed to the top of many news cy­cles due to the very wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed video that showed, to most of the peo­ple who viewed it, Sama­roo meet­ing his demise in a hail of po­lice bul­lets as he had his hands up in the tra­di­tion­al sign of sur­ren­der.

How­ev­er, the sto­ry has mor­phed from be­ing seen as just an­oth­er ex­tra­ju­di­cial po­lice killing—of which this coun­try, quite un­for­tu­nate­ly, has had too many—to some­thing quite ex­tra­or­di­nary, af­ter T&T’s long-serv­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Roger Gas­pard, last Thurs­day in­struct­ed that Sealy be charged with three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, shoot­ing at the po­lice and the un­law­ful killing of Sama­roo.

Those ini­tial charges re­sult­ed in what can on­ly be de­scribed as col­lec­tive na­tion­al dis­be­lief, which was com­pound­ed on Tues­day when four ad­di­tion­al charges re­lat­ing to pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion were laid against Sealy, who is cur­rent­ly re­ceiv­ing med­ical treat­ment in the US for in­juries sus­tained in the Jan­u­ary shoot­ing.

The dra­ma did not end there. The Sama­roo case en­tered a dif­fer­ent phase when a group of Ka­ia’s friends and sup­port­ers de­cid­ed to stage a demon­stra­tion out­side the DPP's of­fice in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day.

As Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Op­er­a­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, ac­knowl­edged in a state­ment on Sun­day that while protests are not pro­hib­it­ed un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency, all pub­lic gath­er­ings must com­ply with the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions. This, Mar­tin added, meant the TTPS has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to main­tain pub­lic safe­ty and pre­serve pub­lic or­der, in­clud­ing the law­ful dis­per­sal of such as­sem­blies if they are deemed a threat to pub­lic safe­ty.

With that said, it would be dif­fi­cult for the po­lice ser­vice to sus­tain an ar­gu­ment that a few dozen peo­ple with plac­ards and posters call­ing for the re­moval of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty con­sti­tut­ed ei­ther a threat to pub­lic safe­ty or en­dan­gered pub­lic or­der.

What is more in­trigu­ing is the Emer­gency Pow­ers (Pro­hi­bi­tion of Pub­lic Protests and Demon­stra­tions) Or­der, 2026, signed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on Wednes­day, which pre­vents protests with­in 500 me­tres of 15 key build­ings, in­clud­ing the DPP's of­fice, the Par­lia­ment, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice head­quar­ters and all po­lice sta­tions in the coun­try.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the move was made by the CoP on the same day po­lice shut down a re­quest by Ka­ia’s friends and sup­port­ers for a protest out­side the DPP’s of­fice that end­ed in ar­rests.

It leaves one to won­der about the tim­ing of the CoP’s lat­est move—the le­gal­i­ty of which is al­so shroud­ed in doubt be­cause the doc­u­ment had not been pub­lished in the T&T Gazette up to last night.