Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Al­most eight years af­ter five men were sum­mar­i­ly ex­e­cut­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers near their Laven­tille homes, the State has been or­dered to pay their fam­i­lies over $4 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

In a re­cent judg­ment, High Court Judge Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for the fam­i­lies of Mechack Dou­glas, Sha­keem Fran­cois, Shaun­dell St Clair, Nicholas Bark­er and Kudiem Phillip as she up­held an as­sault and bat­tery and mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice case against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The men’s rel­a­tives claimed that on Oc­to­ber 25, 2018, then 22-year-old Dou­glas was lis­ten­ing to mu­sic and play­ing cards with a group of friends be­hind one of their homes at Up­per Whar­ton Street, Trou Macaque Road, Laven­tille.

A group of of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) en­tered the prop­er­ty and al­leged­ly taunt­ed Dou­glas be­fore shoot­ing him in his chest.

St Clair, who was 19-years-old at the time, al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to run away but was caught by an of­fi­cer, who beat him with a gun be­fore shoot­ing him.

Fran­cois, Bark­er and Phillip, who were 15, 23 and 17, were al­so shot and killed.

One of the friends man­aged to run away and hide from the of­fi­cers un­til they left.

In de­fence of the law­suit, the State claimed that the men shot at the po­lice of­fi­cers and were killed in the shoot-out that fol­lowed.

The claim was con­sis­tent with com­ments from then-po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who at the time claimed that the of­fi­cers were “greet­ed by gun­fire” and act­ed in self-de­fence.

While rel­a­tives of vic­tims of ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings usu­al­ly pur­sue wrong­ful death cas­es, the group’s at­tor­neys led by Lee Mer­ry, filed the nov­el law­suits as they con­tend­ed that the men’s deaths were not caused by neg­li­gence but rather were in­tend­ed by the po­lice of­fi­cers.

Jus­tice Ay­ers-Cae­sar agreed with the con­tention as she found the of­fi­cers’ claims in­cred­i­ble based on the ev­i­dence be­fore her.

She not­ed that au­top­sies on Dou­glas and St Clair showed that they were shot in their chests at close range.

She al­so not­ed that two firearms, which po­lice of­fi­cers claimed they found on the men af­ter the shoot­ing, ap­peared in pris­tine con­di­tions as though they had nev­er been used be­fore.

“It is pass­ing strange that nei­ther weapon had a trace amount of blood, dirt or any ap­pear­ance as if they had been used at all,” Jus­tice Ay­ers-Cae­sar said.

She al­so took is­sue with the fact that the po­lice did not pro­duce any foren­sic ev­i­dence to but­tress their claim over what tran­spired.

“Giv­en the over-abun­dance of in­con­sis­ten­cies in the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed on be­half of the De­fen­dants, the Court holds the po­si­tion that on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties the Claimants have pro­duced a more plau­si­ble and prob­a­ble ex­pla­na­tion for the un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent which oc­curred on the date in ques­tion,” she said.

Jus­tice Ay­ers-Cae­sar, who presided over scores of pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries in mur­der cas­es dur­ing her time as chief mag­is­trate, al­so raised con­cerns over the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent as she point­ed out that the of­fi­cers were not in­ter­viewed sep­a­rate­ly and in­de­pen­dent wit­ness­es were not in­ter­ro­gat­ed.

“The in­ad­e­qua­cy of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the part of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to take any steps to prop­er­ly and thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter can on­ly lead one to con­clude that there may have been at­tempts to cov­er up what ac­tu­al­ly took place on the night in Oc­to­ber 2018.”

Based on her find­ings on as­sault and bat­tery, the of­fi­cers in­volved in the shoot­ing were li­able for mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice.

“The unau­tho­rised killing of the men on the date in ques­tion, cou­pled with the in­cred­u­lous de­fence which they have put for­ward, clear­ly shows that the par­ty of of­fi­cers act­ed in bad faith and with reck­less in­dif­fer­ence as to the il­le­gal­i­ty of their ac­tions and the po­ten­tial harm to these young peo­ple,” she said.

Jus­tice Ay­ers-Cae­sar or­dered $125,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages for as­sault and bat­tery and $75,000 for mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice.

The ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion was char­ac­terised un­der ag­gra­vat­ed and vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages to high­light the court’s ab­hor­rence to­wards the un­law­ful con­duct of the po­lice of­fi­cers in the case.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Di­rec­tor David West not­ed that the in­ci­dent was thor­ough­ly probed by PCA in­ves­ti­ga­tors, who sub­mit­ted a de­tailed and time­ly re­port.

He con­firmed that on Au­gust 5, 2020, the PCA wrote to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, re­fer­ring to the re­port and rec­om­mend­ing that the of­fi­cers be charged with mur­der.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that sev­er­al months lat­er, DPP Gas­pard in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ter was re­ferred to the TTPS for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pos­si­ble charges.

“This shows that the PCA has done their part in the crim­i­nal process, and I guess it is up to the DPP to de­ter­mine charges,” West said.

He said that the seem­ing lack of out­come in the TTPS probe high­light­ed long-stand­ing is­sues over the TTPS be­ing al­lowed to probe crim­i­nal con­duct by its mem­bers.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the TTPS for an up­date on the case, but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to press time.

The men’s rel­a­tives were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ajesh Sumes­sar. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ste­fan Jaikaran and Ja­nine Joseph.