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Friday, February 28, 2025

Cops kill 3 alleged robbery suspects in Chaguanas

by

Jensen La Vende & Rhondor Dowlat
28 days ago
20250131

GUARDIAN

Two men and a woman were killed by po­lice on Wednes­day night in Ch­agua­nas.

Po­lice re­ports said of­fi­cers from the Cou­va Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force and the Cou­va Charge Room were on an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise at 10.30 pm along Per­se­ver­ance Road, Ch­agua­nas, when they spot­ted a gold Nis­san Ti­i­da, which matched the de­scrip­tion of a ve­hi­cle used in a vi­o­lent rob­bery ear­ly Wednes­day along Ojar Av­enue, Chan­der­nagore.

Of­fi­cers called on the dri­ver of the car to stop. He com­plied but when they be­gan to ap­proach the ve­hi­cle, of­fi­cers were greet­ed with gun­fire.

Of­fi­cers took cov­er and re­turned fire.

The dri­ver sped off and of­fi­cers chased the car but re­port­ed­ly lost sight of it.

How­ev­er, when of­fi­cers be­gan to make checks in and around the sur­round­ing area, they saw a man armed with a gun suf­fer­ing from in­juries in a bushy area.

Po­lice said when the of­fi­cers called on the man to drop the gun, he re­fused and in­stead point­ed it in their di­rec­tion and they opened fire.

Fur­ther checks in the area led to of­fi­cers find­ing a woman suf­fer­ing from gun­shot in­juries and an­oth­er man who was bleed­ing.

The sus­pects were tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty where they suc­cumbed to their in­juries.

The ve­hi­cle the three were in was lat­er found crashed in the bushy area with a firearm in­side.

Up to yes­ter­day evening, po­lice had not yet re­leased the names of the three.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing, head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) David West said he had not re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about the po­lice-in­volved killings.

How­ev­er, on Tues­day, dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, West again raised con­cerns about the chal­lenges his of­fice faces in se­cur­ing co-op­er­a­tion from po­lice of­fi­cers, se­nior of­fi­cials, and even the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in con­duct­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“Co-op­er­a­tion from the po­lice is crit­i­cal for the PCA to ful­fil its man­date of in­de­pen­dent over­sight,” West stat­ed. How­ev­er, he re­vealed that the Au­thor­i­ty has re­peat­ed­ly en­coun­tered de­lays in re­ceiv­ing re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion, lim­it­ed re­spons­es to crit­i­cal queries, and, at times, out­right re­sis­tance.

“De­lays in ob­tain­ing cru­cial in­for­ma­tion can hin­der the time­ly com­ple­tion of in­ves­ti­ga­tions. This af­fects the pub­lic’s trust in our abil­i­ty to hold of­fi­cers ac­count­able. In some cas­es, I’ve had to per­son­al­ly call se­nior mem­bers of the TTPS to ad­dress these is­sues and get the co-op­er­a­tion we need.”

West al­so un­der­scored the im­por­tance of body-worn cam­eras in en­sur­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

The PCA di­rec­tor said it has im­ple­ment­ed out­reach and ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes aimed at clar­i­fy­ing its man­date.

“We are work­ing to en­sure that of­fi­cers un­der­stand we are here to sup­port ac­count­abil­i­ty, not to un­der­mine their work,” West said.

So far for the year there have been nine po­lice killings.


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