Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin says he ex­pects a re­port in­to an in­ci­dent in which of­fi­cers were caught on video beat­ing a man dur­ing the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val by the end of to­day.

Ben­jamin said he or­dered the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy af­ter it sur­faced on so­cial me­dia.

“I know what is seen, seems to be a lit­tle bit ex­ces­sive and that’s be­yond the use of force pol­i­cy. I spoke with the (Gold) com­man­der (act­ing ACP Garvin Hen­ry), as well as the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent in charge of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB). I think that there’s a lev­el of trans­paren­cy that we must op­er­ate by and al­so a lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. I told the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent of the GEB that there’s a need for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be done and he al­so agreed.”

He cau­tioned the pub­lic that while they may have been up­set over the ab­sence of most of the Ja­maican acts, they should not have en­gaged in un­ruly be­hav­iour.

“We al­so want to en­cour­age per­sons in the fu­ture, you know, that we seek not to be as dis­rup­tive be­cause these are the things that re­al­ly bring a lev­el of dis­or­der and law­less­ness. And the po­lice ser­vice, we would not tol­er­ate that lev­el of dis­rup­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in a con­cert or any oth­er thing. There’s a way, if you are dis­grun­tled, to deal with mat­ters and we are say­ing whether you take it to the courts or not; that is what we’re say­ing you need to do, but do not show any form of dis­rup­tion where you want to dam­age peo­ple’s prop­er­ty.”

Ben­jamin said there were two ar­rests at the end of the con­cert but could not say if the man seen be­ing beat­en was one of them.

In re­sponse to the video, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) di­rec­tor David West said he was aware of the video but was await­ing more in­for­ma­tion be­fore mak­ing any com­ments.

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said the video showed the of­fi­cers’ “back­ward un­trained polic­ing.”

In a so­cial me­dia post, he said “Any­thing like this in a pro­fes­sion­al Po­lice Ser­vice, and these of­fi­cers would be sus­pend­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. How could these men be in a tac­ti­cal unit and not un­der­stand use of force pol­i­cy? If the in­di­vid­ual broke the law, or was a se­ri­ous threat and could not be con­trolled, you don’t go jab­bing and swing­ing ba­tons and kick­ing him as if it is two drunk men fight­ing in a bar.”

Grif­fith sug­gest­ed that to sup­press him, the of­fi­cers should have brought him to the ground and hand­cuffed him or use pep­per spray.

“This ac­tion was more of anger than to sup­press the sus­pect, who, by the way, was seen as not be­ing con­fronta­tion­al and hence not be­ing a threat. It is when these stu­pid ac­tions take place by two rogue, un­trained of­fi­cers in an elite unit, this con­tributes to why pub­lic con­fi­dence in TTPS was 59 per cent just a few years ago, when this type of ig­no­rant be­hav­iour would have re­sult­ed in im­me­di­ate ac­tion tak­en, to it now be­ing less than 10 per cent as most are sure that this ac­tion would be ig­nored if not ac­cept­ed.”