Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj has be­gun a high-lev­el stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion to ad­dress de­lays in in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

The Min­istry of Jus­tice, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said a re­port with rec­om­men­da­tions aris­ing out of the talks will be sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net to look in­to the mat­ter.

Sta­tis­tics from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) re­vealed that for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1, 2024, to Ju­ly 3, 2024, there were 15 fa­tal shoot­ing in­ci­dents with 23 vic­tims. How­ev­er, for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1, 2025, to Ju­ly 2 2025, there were 30 fa­tal shoot­ing in­ci­dents with 39 vic­tims.

The meet­ing, held at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza’s Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, brought to­geth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the PCA, Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (TTF­SC).

Al­so in at­ten­dance were At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, PCA di­rec­tor David West and TTF­SC di­rec­tor Der­rick Sankar.

The Min­istry of Jus­tice said the ses­sion fo­cused on op­er­a­tional chal­lenges faced by the PCA dur­ing its in­ves­ti­ga­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly de­lays that im­pact case out­comes and pub­lic con­fi­dence. It said par­tic­i­pants ex­plored prac­ti­cal strate­gies to strength­en in­ter-agency co­or­di­na­tion and ac­cel­er­ate in­ves­tiga­tive time­lines.

The agen­cies reaf­firmed their com­mit­ment to col­lab­o­ra­tion, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and con­tin­u­ous di­a­logue. They agreed that a re­port sum­maris­ing the meet­ing’s dis­cus­sions and rec­om­men­da­tions would be sub­mit­ted to the Cab­i­net.

Min­is­ter Ma­haraj thanked the par­tic­i­pants for their en­gage­ment and high­light­ed the im­por­tance of sus­tained co­op­er­a­tion in ad­vanc­ing jus­tice and pro­tect­ing the rights of all cit­i­zens.