Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has de­scribed as “whol­ly un­ac­cept­able” the mur­der of a sus­pect out­side the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion just min­utes af­ter he was re­leased from cus­tody.

The killing of Kevon “Bum­bles” Moses al­so left neigh­bours from his east Port-of-Spain home ques­tion­ing how gun­men knew the ex­act time he would be re­leased in or­der to strike.

Moses, 28, was gunned down sec­onds af­ter be­ing re­leased from po­lice cus­tody at 6 pm on Mon­day.

He was ar­rest­ed last Fri­day and ques­tioned as part of a probe in­to the mur­der of Dar­ryl Bou­caud, 36, in St Ann’s last week.

Po­lice said in­ves­ti­ga­tors did not have much ev­i­dence to keep Moses un­der ar­rest and re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from his at­tor­ney call­ing for his re­lease.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers at the sta­tion asked Moses if he want­ed to make a call to get a ride to his home, but he de­clined, say­ing he pre­ferred to walk.

As Moses walked on­to Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road near the park­ing lot of the po­lice sta­tion, he was con­front­ed by a gun­man who shot him sev­er­al times be­fore get­ting in­to a car and es­cap­ing

Po­lice took Moses to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was de­clared dead.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found 11 spent 5.56 shells at the scene.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day vis­it­ed the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, where Moses’ body was ex­pect­ed to be tak­en for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by rel­a­tives but as of mid­day, the body had not ar­rived to the cen­tre.

In Moses’ Cal­vary Hill, East Dry Riv­er neigh­bour­hood, his friends and neigh­bours said the killing raised con­cerns over how re­li­able the po­lice were.

One man, who said he knew Moses, said he worked for the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) some time ago be­fore find­ing oth­er work. He said Moses’ mur­der was not en­cour­ag­ing for res­i­dents who sought help from the po­lice.

“If I got locked up for a do­mes­tic in­ci­dent, does this mean that if I walk out the sta­tion, some­one could be wait­ing for me and the po­lice won’t be there to pro­tect me? The take home mes­sage is that the po­lice isn’t work­ing. How can you as a cit­i­zen feel safe when you see some­one get­ting killed in front of the sta­tion?”

An­oth­er res­i­dent said while he was not sure about what hap­pened, it re­flect­ed bad­ly on the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to pro­tect peo­ple in their cus­tody.

He al­so di­rect­ly called on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to make every ef­fort to find rogue of­fi­cers and re­move them.

“Give us a clean out or purge them (cor­rupt po­lice) out of the sys­tem. Fix it and prove to us that this place can be bet­ter.”

CoP vows to con­front crim­i­nal el­e­ments

In a voice note yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher de­scribed Moses’ mur­der as a “des­per­ate and brazen” at­tack.

She al­so promised that the po­lice would con­tin­ue to work to­wards bet­ter se­cur­ing com­mu­ni­ties from crim­i­nals.

“The po­lice views such con­duct as whol­ly un­ac­cept­able and vows to con­tin­ue to con­front and ap­pre­hend crim­i­nal el­e­ments wher­ev­er we find them in the in­ter­est of en­sur­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of every cit­i­zen,” she said.

The TTPS pub­lic in­for­ma­tion unit told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that se­nior of­fi­cers were con­cerned about how close the mur­der hap­pened to the po­lice sta­tion but vowed to re­view se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at sta­tions.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns over a po­ten­tial leak in in­for­ma­tion, the TTPS not­ed that sev­er­al peo­ple and not just of­fi­cers at the sta­tion would have been aware that Moses was be­ing re­leased.

“It must be not­ed that quite a num­ber of per­sons may have been aware in­clud­ing his af­fil­i­ates, of ef­forts to have him re­leased from cus­tody. It must al­so be not­ed that he was de­tained as a re­sult of an on­go­ing homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tion. These in­ves­ti­ga­tions could in­volve any num­ber of per­sons,” it said.

The TTPS added that of­fi­cers had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the safe­ty of peo­ple un­der their care and took their du­ties se­ri­ous­ly.

It al­so said in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the of­fences for which Moses was held will con­tin­ue.

In Jan­u­ary 2017, Ker­lan “Mice­man” George and Shameel Ali were killed out­side the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion af­ter George signed a reg­is­ter at the sta­tion.

As of yes­ter­day, the coun­try’s mur­der count stood at 502 com­pared to 534 for the same pe­ri­od last year.