Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don has warned that ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings point to a so­ci­ety that has “gone rogue,” while al­so stress­ing the need to prop­er­ly de­fine what con­sti­tutes an ex­tra-ju­di­cial killing.

He made the com­ments while ap­pear­ing on The Big In­ter­view, which is sched­uled to air on CNC3 on Sun­day. His re­marks came a day af­ter three peo­ple were ar­rest­ed out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, while protest­ing the ar­rest war­rant is­sued for Ka­ia Sealy in con­nec­tion with the po­lice-in­volved death of her boyfriend, Joshua Sama­roo, on Jan­u­ary 20 in St Au­gus­tine.

Gor­don said po­lice-in­volved in­ci­dents are not new, not­ing that such cas­es have oc­curred over many years. How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) must guard against any per­cep­tion of rogue be­hav­iour.

“There are more than one (in­ci­dents). I re­mem­ber many years ago there were three cas­es at the same time, one af­ter the oth­er. One of the most fa­mous ones was the fel­la fell off the chair and died in a po­lice sta­tion, sup­pos­ed­ly. Ex­tra-ju­di­cial killing is al­ways a lit­mus test of a so­ci­ety gone rogue, be­cause when the po­lice be­come part of the gang men­tal­i­ty, we have a prob­lem,” he said.

He added, how­ev­er, that not every po­lice-in­volved in­ci­dent amounts to an ex­tra-ju­di­cial killing.

“On the oth­er hand, you can’t just as­sume that when some­thing went wrong be­tween a po­lice­man and a cit­i­zen, that it is an ex­tra-ju­di­cial killing. That is a case where the law has to pre­vail.”

Gor­don said de­lays in the jus­tice sys­tem con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to pub­lic frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety.

“A ma­jor part of the prob­lem is when the law takes a long time to ad­ju­di­cate. It cre­ates great anx­i­ety in a so­ci­ety, and it cre­ates harm that is un­nec­es­sary,” he said, adding that some mat­ters should be ex­pe­dit­ed in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that cit­i­zens have drift­ed from the moral foun­da­tions of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, and crit­i­cised as­pects of the coun­try’s gov­er­nance mod­el.

Gor­don said the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal sys­tem “is in­ap­pro­pri­ate for the type of na­tion that we are with the lev­els of di­ver­si­ty we have,” adding that par­ti­san pol­i­tics of­ten un­der­mines con­ti­nu­ity in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“When you have an Op­po­si­tion whose job is to op­pose and a Gov­ern­ment whose job is to do things and when one changes to the next, they mash up every­thing that was good,” he said, call­ing for bi­par­ti­san agree­ment in key ar­eas such as ed­u­ca­tion, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and de­vel­op­ment.

Com­ment­ing on the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Holy Name Con­vent prin­ci­pal Sis­ter Re­nee Hall, Gor­don said the process must be al­lowed to con­clude be­fore any ac­tion is tak­en.

A Guardian Me­dia re­port on Hall for Moth­er’s Day trig­gered wide­spread pub­lic re­ac­tion, with some cur­rent and for­mer stu­dents al­leg­ing emo­tion­al dis­tress and mis­treat­ment. On May 20, the school an­nounced an in­de­pen­dent re­view process.

The Board of Man­age­ment at Holy Name Con­vent said the re­view com­mit­tee will be chaired by Vin­cent Per­ri­era and will in­clude pro­fes­sion­als in psy­chol­o­gy, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, com­pli­ance, gov­er­nance and in­sti­tu­tion­al lead­er­ship. Lu­cent Re­search has been en­gaged as an in­de­pen­dent third par­ty to sup­port the se­cure col­lec­tion and man­age­ment of in­for­ma­tion and sub­mis­sions.

On the al­le­ga­tions, Gor­don urged cau­tion in in­ter­pret­ing so­cial me­dia re­spons­es.

“A lot of peo­ple came out and said a lot of things. The ques­tion with so­cial me­dia you al­ways have to ask; are these a lot of peo­ple com­ing out and say­ing a lot of things or is this a few peo­ple ma­nip­u­lat­ing so­cial me­dia to make it look that way,” he said while on his ad lim­i­na vis­it to Rome to meet Pope Leo XIV.

He added that cred­i­ble com­plaints must be prop­er­ly as­sessed.

“The first thing is; is there a cred­i­ble ac­cu­sa­tion and if there is a cred­i­ble ac­cu­sa­tion, our re­sponse is al­ways, let’s step back, let’s look at it in the light of day and let’s make an as­sess­ment of what needs to hap­pen to go for­ward, which is what we have done.”

Gor­don said he sup­ports the in­de­pen­dent in­ves­tiga­tive process.

“If peo­ple have been hurt, then we have to do heal­ing, and if peo­ple have been in some way im­pact­ed, we have to do the heal­ing. At the same time, you can’t say that some­body is guilty of a crime that is not spe­cif­ic and that is not clear, and that’s why the re­sponse of the board was let’s get an in­de­pen­dent group, let them give us a re­port, then let us act af­ter that.”

Holy Name Con­vent has not yet pro­vid­ed an up­date on the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.