SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Be­tween 2014 and Au­gust 14 of this year, there have been 443 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings in the coun­try. That’s an av­er­age of 40 po­lice killings a year or three every month.

A break­down of the sta­tis­tics showed 62 peo­ple were killed by po­lice of­fi­cers in 2020—the high­est fig­ure record­ed in the last 11 years. In 2022, 55 peo­ple were fa­tal­ly shot, which reg­is­tered the sec­ond high­est num­ber. The year 2017 ranked third with 46 peo­ple be­ing gunned down by the po­lice.

In 2014 (not shared on the bar chart), there were 45 killings.

For this year so far, there have been 33 killings, sur­pass­ing the num­ber of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings in years 2015, 2016, and 2021, which were be­tween 19 and 31.

The 443 killings stemmed from 348 in­ci­dents.

The shock­ing sta­tis­tics were pro­vid­ed to the Sun­day Guardian by a high-rank­ing of­fi­cer in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) on Thurs­day.

The doc­u­ment showed that the “sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions” in­to the ma­jor­i­ty of the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings re­mains “pend­ing”. Six were “re­clas­si­fied as mur­der.”

A to­tal of 14 of­fi­cers were charged with mur­der, all of which are still pend­ing be­fore the courts. The charges were laid in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2023.

One of­fi­cer was freed of mur­der in 2016.

PCA refers 15 mat­ters for DPP to con­sid­er crim­i­nal charges

The Sun­day Guardian al­so reached out to Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) di­rec­tor David West re­gard­ing the PCA’s tab­u­la­tion of fa­tal po­lice killings. The PCA’s sta­tis­tics dat­ed Jan­u­ary 1, 2015, to Au­gust 22, 2024, showed there were 313

po­lice-in­volved killings over ten years. The po­lice’s fig­ures over the ten-year pe­ri­od showed 398 killings—a dif­fer­ence of 85.
The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that not all po­lice-in­volved killings are re­port­ed to the PCA by the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies.

The PCA is T&T’s on­ly civil­ian over­sight body. It is an in­de­pen­dent body set up by Par­lia­ment to keep watch over the po­lice. Of the 313 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings the PCA has record­ed, West said 310 have been in­ves­ti­gat­ed. West said the PCA re­ferred 15 of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard for con­sid­er­a­tion of crim­i­nal charges against po­lice of­fi­cers.

The high­est num­ber of in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­ferred to the DPP for crim­i­nal charges was four in 2020. In 2017 and 2018, the DPP re­ceived three in­ves­ti­ga­tions each for of­fi­cers to be charged with crim­i­nal of­fences.

The PCA al­so for­ward­ed 15 in­ves­ti­ga­tions to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (COP) for ac­tion—four of which were re­ceived in 2021 and three each in 2017 and 2018. The num­ber of in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­ferred to both the DPP and COP for in­ter­ven­tion was two, one each in 2018 and 2020.

West said ex­cept for 2020, in which the PCA record­ed 53 fa­tal po­lice killings—the high­est to date—”the”fig­ures have re­mained rough­ly the same each year.” He said there have been “21 in­ci­dents of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings so far for 2024. All are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the PCA.”

Since the PCA’s in­clu­sion un­der the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing coro­nial pro­ceed­ings, West said the au­thor­i­ty was no­ti­fied by the court “of a to­tal of 19 coro­ner’s in­quests,” which are on­go­ing and at­tend­ed by the au­thor­i­ty when mat­ters are to be heard.

A pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­duct­ed by the coro­ner to as­sist in their de­ter­mi­na­tion of whether or not a coro­ner’s in­quest ought to be con­duct­ed. The six peo­ple killed in Freeport two weeks ago, West said, were the high­est num­ber of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings he was aware of.

He said the PCA’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the six deaths was still in its ear­ly stages and that the au­thor­i­ty is work­ing to have an in­de­pen­dent re­port on the in­ci­dent. Asked if the nine peo­ple killed by the po­lice for this month were too many, giv­en our pop­u­la­tion, West said, “Judg­ing from the sta­tis­tics over the nine years, I would say nine po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings are a high num­ber for one month ... and the month is not over yet.”

Cops not wear­ing body cams, files not sub­mit­ted in a time­ly man­ner

West gave a “yes” and “no” an­swer when asked if he felt these killings could fur­ther dam­age the TTP’s rep­u­ta­tion, bear­ing in mind that pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the ser­vice have been dwin­dling.

“Some say yes, it would dam­age the rep­u­ta­tion of the TTPS. Some would say no, in that it im­proves the rep­u­ta­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice. The PCA says let there be an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine whether it was a law­ful or un­law­ful po­lice shoot­ing.”

He said while po­lice of­fi­cers have been man­dat­ed by the COP to wear body cam­eras when on of­fi­cial du­ty to en­sure trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, the PCA has re­ceived no video footage in any of this year’s fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings from the TTPS. West said the PCA had is­sued ad­vice un­der Sec­tion 21 (1)(d) of the PCA Act to past and present CoPs that body cam­eras should be worn. West said in some cas­es, wit­ness­es come for­ward and pro­vide state­ments.

“In oth­er cas­es, wit­ness­es are un­will­ing or afraid to come for­ward as they fear reprisals.”

Asked if the PCA has dif­fi­cul­ty re­ceiv­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed files from the TTPS de­spite re­quests made, West said while the po­lice ser­vice has been very co­op­er­a­tive with in­ves­ti­ga­tions, “we find that in some cas­es, cer­tain in­for­ma­tion and doc­u­ments that close files are not re­ceived in a time­ly man­ner, there­by de­lay­ing cas­es.”

He said the PCA has reis­sued pre­vi­ous ad­vice to the TTPS for con­sid­er­a­tion to be giv­en for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a prop­er file man­age­ment and record­ing sys­tem, which may guar­an­tee an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive records func­tion.

“Such a sys­tem may as­sist in re­but­ting al­le­ga­tions of se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct or ne­glect of du­ty, as in­ves­tiga­tive files can then be read­i­ly pro­duced to ev­i­dence the con­duct of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.” 

The in­quest

At the close of an in­quest, three ac­tions can be tak­en: If at the end of the in­quest, the coro­ner is of the opin­ion that suf­fi­cient grounds are dis­closed for mak­ing a charge on in­dict­ment against any per­son, he may is­sue a war­rant for ap­pre­hen­sion.

Where the coro­ner is of the opin­ion that there is ground for sus­pect­ing that some per­son is guilty of an in­dictable of­fence, but can­not as­cer­tain who the per­son is, he shall cer­ti­fy his opin­ion to ef­fect and trans­mit the pro­ceed­ings to the CoP.

Where the coro­ner has con­duct­ed an in­quest and forms an opin­ion that there is no ground for sus­pect­ing that any­one is guilty of an in­dictable of­fence, he shall trans­mit the pro­ceed­ings to the DPP.

Of­fi­cers charged with mur­der

* In Ju­ly 2020, eight po­lice of­fi­cers ap­peared in court charged with a triple mur­der that sparked a vi­o­lent out­cry for jus­tice from sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in Port-of-Spain.

Sgt Joseph Solomon, Cpl Charles Bu­dri and po­lice con­sta­bles Sher­win Bap­tiste, Mark Lewis, Vaughn St Cyr, Sean Lord, Jameel Mo­hammed and Col­in Fur­longe for­mal­ly at­tached to the In­ter-Agency Task Force were charged with the mur­ders of Joel Ja­cob, Noel Di­a­mond and Is­rael Moses Clin­ton at Ju­man Dri­ve, Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, on June 27, 2020.

The mat­ter cre­at­ed his­to­ry in the po­lice ser­vice as the great­est num­ber of of­fi­cers to be charged from a sin­gle in­ci­dent.

* In Au­gust of 2022, PC Kris­t­ian Gen­ty, who was last as­signed to the West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, was charged with the mur­der of PC Clarence Gilkes on April 22. Gilkes was among 12 of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed to a re­port that men were seen bran­dish­ing guns at Up­per Rich Plain Road, Diego Mar­tin. Po­lice ini­tial­ly claimed there was an ex­change of gun­fire. Jehlano Rom­ney, who was sin­gled out as the main sus­pect in the shoot­ings, main­tained his in­no­cence, stat­ing that he was un­armed.

An au­top­sy lat­er showed that Gilkes was shot in the neck from be­hind. Sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence gath­ered by the PCA re­vealed that Gilkes was killed by one of his own, re­sult­ing in Gen­ty be­ing charged.

West con­clud­ed that mem­bers of the TTPS had abused their pow­er. Rom­ney, who be­came the State’s main wit­ness in the mur­der, was gunned down in­side a house in Mor­vant in No­vem­ber 2022.

Gen­ty, while fir­ing shots at the men, al­leged­ly shot Gilkes, who lat­er died.

* Last De­cem­ber, PC Sid­ney Roberts was charged with the mur­der of sib­lings Sime­on and Sini­ay­aLe­sey-Baird, who were fa­tal­ly shot in the carpark of Courts Mega­s­tore in San Juan on De­cem­ber 17, 2023.

Roberts was last at­tached to the Jus­tice Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme.

6 of­fi­cers freed of 2011 mur­ders

Last No­vem­ber, a ju­ry hand­ed down a not guilty ver­dict on Sgt Khem­raj Sa­hadeo and PCs Re­nal­do Re­viero, Glenn Singh, Roger Nicholas, Safraz Ju­man and An­to­nio Ra­madin, who were charged with the 2011 mur­ders of three friends, Abi­gail, John­son Alana Dun­can and Ker­ron Ec­cles, in Bar­rack­pore.