Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter two men were killed dur­ing a pur­port­ed shootout with po­lice in San­gre Grande, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son, says while all in­ci­dents of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings are con­cern­ing, added at­ten­tion should al­so be placed on the pro­lif­er­a­tion of high-pow­ered guns and the preva­lence of vi­o­lent of­fend­ers still free to con­tin­ue at­tack­ing per­sons.

On Sun­day, Shyein Tran­coso and off-du­ty sol­dier En­rique Gar­cia were con­front­ed by po­lice in Jairas­ingh Vil­lage.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, of­fi­cers tried to in­ter­cept the red Hon­da Vezel both men were in at the time but were shot at by the sus­pects. Po­lice re­turned fire killing both men. An AR-15 and 25 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion were found in the car.

The rel­a­tives of both men have since dis­missed the of­fi­cial po­lice re­port and ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances that led to their deaths.

Speak­ing with re­porters at a health and well­ness fair at the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T (VM­COTT) on Tues­day, Dick­son said of­fi­cers were well with­in their rights to de­fend them­selves, even with lethal force if nec­es­sary.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), there have been 46 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings as of Sep­tem­ber 23, 2025, com­pared to 23 for the same pe­ri­od last year. There have al­so been 18 non-fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings, com­pared to 15 for the same cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2024.

Dick­son said of­fi­cers were trained to shoot if their lives or the lives of oth­ers were in dan­ger and he ex­pect­ed them to keep them­selves safe.

With­out re­fer­ring to any in­ci­dent in par­tic­u­lar, Dick­son said he felt the in­crease in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings was part of a wider is­sue which could be at­trib­uted di­rect­ly to an in­crease in avail­abil­i­ty of high-pow­ered au­to­mat­ic ri­fles and weak­ness­es in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

He said such in­ci­dents were ex­pect­ed as of­fi­cers adopt­ed a more proac­tive stance in con­fronting crim­i­nals.

“When you jux­ta­pose all of those things with more po­lice shoot­ings, you are see­ing the po­lice go­ing out and tak­ing the fight to the crim­i­nals,” Dick­son said.

“If we don’t do it, our law abid­ing cit­i­zens will con­tin­ue to live in fear, the sys­tems we have grown ac­cus­tomed to will be­come weak­er, the fab­ric of so­ci­ety will con­tin­ue to de­te­ri­o­rate and we will no longer be the par­adise we were in the not-too-dis­tant past.”

He added, “Even in speak­ing to more po­lice shoot­ings, we have to ap­pre­ci­ate there have been more firearms and that the courts have not been do­ing suf­fi­cient jus­tice, we have to ap­pre­ci­ate that of­fi­cers have been trained to go in there and shoot when their lives or the lives of their col­leagues and the pub­lic are in im­me­di­ate dan­ger. Up­on do­ing so, they don’t have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­vis­it their ac­tions in a 20 sec­ond gap, they have to do it in the mo­ment.”

De­spite this, Dick­son said he was con­fi­dent that ex­ist­ing pro­vi­sions were enough to in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute wrong­do­ing if it was found that of­fi­cers act­ed un­law­ful­ly.

Re­fer­ring to the work of the PCA and the po­lice Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB), he said these bod­ies serve as “guardrails” against any abuse of au­thor­i­ty.

“We have in­ves­ti­ga­tions take place with the PSB, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty act in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic and we are pre­pared to with­stand ju­di­cial scruti­ny.”

Mean­while, ad­dress­ing the re­cent de­ci­sion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to send As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) South-Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar on 16 months’ va­ca­tion leave in the height of the State of Emer­gency and re­as­sign DCPs Ju­nior Ben­jamin, Suzette Mar­tin and Natasha George to new port­fo­lios, Dick­son said the CoP has the au­thor­i­ty to do so.

He said he was con­fi­dent that enough con­sid­er­a­tion and thought went in­to the CoP’s de­ci­sion.

“He (Gue­var­ro) is the on­ly per­son to know who goes when and when goes who and man­age it in such a way at every sin­gle in­ter­val, you’ll have of­fi­cers who are com­pe­tent and ef­fec­tive in de­liv­er­ing the strate­gic goals of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Dick­son said.

“So, in his macro-vi­sion, he might have a plan for when oth­er of­fi­cers who have con­sid­er­able leave, that they should go and some­one else fall in­to place. All of these things are part of man­age­ment.”

Re­fer­ring to his own ex­pe­ri­ence, Dick­son said he ac­cu­mu­lat­ed two years’ leave and was on­ly grant­ed one year’s leave.