As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice (ASP) Owie Rus­sell has de­fend­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) re­sponse to Wednes­day’s protest-re­lat­ed ar­rests, say­ing of­fi­cers act­ed with­in es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures and un­der ex­ist­ing le­gal frame­works.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, ASP Rus­sell ad­dressed pub­lic con­cern over the ar­rest of two peo­ple dur­ing a protest seek­ing jus­tice for Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealy near the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions’ of­fice on Wednes­day.

He said the Guard and Emer­gency Branch was de­ployed be­cause it was a sen­si­tive area of op­er­a­tion.

“The Guard and Emer­gency Branch is the unit that is trained and equipped to deal with sit­u­a­tions like this,” Rus­sell said.

He not­ed that of­fi­cers had pre­vi­ous­ly en­gaged pro­test­ers in di­a­logue and is­sued warn­ings, in­clud­ing re­quests for them to re­main with­in des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas. He said sim­i­lar gath­er­ings had tak­en place ear­li­er with­out per­mis­sion be­ing grant­ed.

He al­so point­ed to le­gal con­sid­er­a­tions un­der emer­gency pow­ers reg­u­la­tions, say­ing in­di­vid­u­als can be li­able if their ac­tions en­cour­age or in­cite un­law­ful con­duct dur­ing an il­le­gal as­sem­bly.

“No charges have been laid yet, but un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, no one is to en­gage in any be­hav­iour or make any state­ment to en­tice or en­cour­age per­sons to com­mit any crime or break the law with­in which they are do­ing an il­le­gal protest,” he said.

Rus­sell stressed that po­lice are not seek­ing con­fronta­tion with the pub­lic, adding that en­force­ment de­ci­sions are guid­ed by safe­ty con­cerns and op­er­a­tional judge­ment.

He al­so raised con­cern about the pres­ence of chil­dren at the protest, ques­tion­ing why par­ents would take a child in­to that kind of en­vi­ron­ment. He said of­fi­cers were giv­ing ver­bal com­mands dur­ing the in­ci­dent, in­clud­ing di­rec­tions to move away from re­strict­ed ar­eas, and warned that such sit­u­a­tions could be­come risky if an emer­gency re­sponse was re­quired. He al­so ref­er­enced pre­vi­ous protest in­ci­dents where chil­dren were present and said it had led to un­for­tu­nate out­comes.

Rus­sell urged the pub­lic to al­low the le­gal process to take its course, not­ing that mat­ters aris­ing from such in­ci­dents are ul­ti­mate­ly ven­ti­lat­ed be­fore the courts through dis­clo­sure and tri­al pro­ce­dures.

“We un­der­stand the ten­sions, we un­der­stand the pain, we un­der­stand the hurt. What we are ask­ing as the TTPS is that, al­low the process to take place,” he said.

Rus­sell al­so touched on broad­er con­cerns about pub­lic per­cep­tion and crit­i­cism of po­lice con­duct on so­cial me­dia. He said polic­ing must be ap­plied con­sis­tent­ly and not based on con­ve­nience or pub­lic pres­sure.

The TTPS has not yet con­firmed whether ad­di­tion­al charges will be laid in re­la­tion to the protest in­ci­dent.