Gail Alexan­der

and Rhon­dor Dowlat

A po­lice of­fi­cer, who was cap­tured in a video that went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia on Mon­day al­leged­ly at­tempt­ing to ar­rest a traf­fic war­den on du­ty in Port-of-Spain, has been sus­pend­ed.

The sus­pen­sion was con­firmed in a me­dia re­lease is­sued by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice last evening.

The of­fi­cer was sus­pend­ed from du­ty by act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, pend­ing the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent.

The po­lice of­fi­cer, who was off-du­ty, and the fe­male traf­fic war­den are cur­rent­ly as­sist­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

The al­leged al­ter­ca­tion oc­curred on Fred­er­ick Street.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was made aware of the in­ci­dent short­ly af­ter noon.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher im­me­di­ate­ly in­struct­ed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be launched sur­round­ing the cir­cum­stances seen in the video footage.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the traf­fic war­den was al­leged­ly ask­ing a fe­male dri­ver for her dri­ver’s li­cense and in­sur­ance when she was al­leged­ly pushed by the off-du­ty of­fi­cer.

It is al­so al­leged by passers-by that the traf­fic war­den was struck by the of­fi­cer.

The video, which was over sev­en min­utes, was cap­tured by an on­look­er and sub­se­quent­ly post­ed on­to so­cial me­dia ,where it went vi­ral on all plat­forms with­in min­utes.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says he shared the con­cern of most cit­i­zens who saw the dis­turb­ing video of the traf­fic war­den be­ing “ar­rest­ed” by an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer and im­me­di­ate­ly called the TTPS lead­er­ship when he saw it.

When con­tact­ed on the mat­ter by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Hinds said, “On the face of it, how­ev­er we look at it, this is a most un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent, as it in­volves two law en­force­ment peo­ple—one in uni­form in di­rect ex­e­cu­tion of her work and the oth­er, a po­lice of­fi­cer who is vest­ed with all the au­thor­i­ty and pow­er giv­en to him un­der the TTPS Act.”

Hinds said he was await­ing the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions that were be­ing done on the mat­ter.

Hinds was among those who viewed the video of the al­ter­ca­tion be­tween the man and the fe­male traf­fic war­den, who was work­ing on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of- Spain.

Many peo­ple ex­pressed out­rage, hor­ror and dis­gust at the sight of the fe­male traf­fic war­den be­ing bod­i­ly ac­cost­ed, “strong-armed,” “raffed” and hand­cuffed by the man, who was wear­ing short pants, a T-shirt and one slip­per, who al­leged to irate on­look­ers that he was an off-du­ty or plain clothes of­fi­cer.

The in­ci­dent par­tic­u­lar­ly caused out­rage among women on so­cial me­dia, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter see­ing what took place when the burly man be­gan “fight­ing down” the traf­fic war­den to hand­cuff her, af­ter her al­leged ques­tion­ing of his dri­ving doc­u­ments.

With the traf­fic war­den de­clar­ing, “Let me go!” as he tried to hold her to hand­cuff her, he sub­se­quent­ly pushed her in­to his car, where a woman sat in the front seat try­ing to hide her face from the cam­eras.

Peo­ple were yelling, “You can­not do she that, dawg!”; “What de a** is this?!”; “Leg­go the woman!”; “That’s a woman you know, she do­ing she work!”

Peo­ple who gath­ered on the scene al­so ap­pealed to the man to re­lease the traf­fic war­den. Some of the fe­male ob­servers gave the uni­formed po­lice—who ar­rived af­ter—first-hand ac­counts of what oc­curred.

Hinds, al­so per­turbed, said, “I had the dis­com­fort of see­ing that video and I shared the con­cern with most cit­i­zens of T&T on that mat­ter. I im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed the TTPS lead­er­ship and I was as­sured that the TTPS Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau and oth­ers of the TTPS will im­me­di­ate­ly in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and it is un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

Speak­ing around 3 pm yes­ter­day, Hinds added, “Most par­ties up to a while ago were at Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion and re­ports were be­ing is­sued via state­ments be­ing record­ed from both par­ties as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the facts and cir­cum­stances in this mat­ter.

“I’m very keen to hear the out­come of this, even as I con­tem­plate that the TTPS spends lot of time and mon­ey train­ing our of­fi­cers in pub­lic re­la­tions and the way they must re­spond to even ex­treme provo­ca­tion.”

He said TTPS of­fi­cers get psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing and all the train­ing they get is geared to­wards them un­der­stand­ing they must use no more force than is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary.

“So, I await the out­come of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as I’m sure most cit­i­zens of T&T do al­so,” he said.