AM­BI­KA JA­GAS­SARS­INGH

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

The US De­part­ment of State’s 2022 Coun­try Re­ports on Hu­man Rights Prac­tices re­leased ear­li­er this year stat­ed that T&T record­ed “sig­nif­i­cant hu­man rights is­sues” in­clud­ing “cred­i­ble re­ports of un­law­ful or ar­bi­trary killings by po­lice” last year.

The 20-page doc­u­ment stat­ed that T&T’s gov­ern­ment did go through the le­gal pro­ceed­ings to pun­ish those in­volved, how­ev­er, “im­puni­ty per­sist­ed due to open-end­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the gen­er­al­ly slow pace of crim­i­nal ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings.”

The re­port’s first sec­tion delved in­to “mo­ti­vat­ed killings,” once again, stat­ing that “there were cred­i­ble re­ports that po­lice com­mit­ted ar­bi­trary or un­law­ful killings.”

Iden­ti­fy­ing a few of the 2022 po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings, the re­port high­light­ed the case of PC Clarence Gilkes who was fa­tal­ly shot last April dur­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion in which civil­ian Jehlano Rom­ney was the prime sus­pect. How­ev­er, bal­lis­tics con­firmed that Gilkes was shot and killed from be­hind by a po­lice weapon.

A PCA in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers had made a false state­ment and char­ac­terised the in­ci­dent as an abuse of po­lice au­thor­i­ty.

Rom­ney was cleared and the DPP then gave in­ves­ti­ga­tors per­mis­sion to charge PC Kris­t­ian Gen­ty for Gilkes’s mur­der. Gen­ty and WPC Crys­tal Williams-Bow­man were al­so charged with shoot­ing at Rom­ney with in­tent to cause harm.

Last No­vem­ber, Rom­ney was shot and killed by an uniden­ti­fied gun­man.

The re­port al­so men­tioned Williams, Richards and Roberts be­ing killed by the po­lice fol­low­ing a Ju­ly 2, 2022 chase in Port-of-Spain and the al­leged re­cov­ery of an il­le­gal firearm from the ve­hi­cle in which they were oc­cu­pants.

“Au­top­sies re­vealed that the men were shot from be­hind,” the re­port stat­ed, adding that “the Po­lice Stan­dards Bu­reau of the TTPS al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ed “whether se­cu­ri­ty force killings are jus­ti­fied.”

It al­so spoke about an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer who shot and killed a man in San Fer­nan­do as the two men ar­gued and scuf­fled over a park­ing spot last Oc­to­ber.