Yes­ter­day’s fiery protests around the na­tion’s cap­i­tal end­ed with eight peo­ple be­hind bars. How­ev­er, with the demon­stra­tions sparked by po­lice ac­tion over the week­end, it’s no far stretch to imag­ine this would not sit well with pro­tes­tors. It’s why the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said of­fi­cers will re­main on alert.

Speak­ing at a Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, hours af­ter the protest ac­tion, Ja­cob thanked of­fi­cers for their work in man­ag­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

“We wish to again thank our of­fi­cers be­cause on this oc­ca­sion, we had no un­to­ward sit­u­a­tions even though six per­sons were ar­rest­ed and two ad­di­tion­al were ar­rest­ed in the La­dy Young area but we had no un­to­ward in­ci­dents. We al­so want to thank, even though some per­sons were in­volved in the protests and the po­lice came, a lot of them abide by the po­lice di­rec­tion and in­struc­tions, so we were able to quell every­thing very quick­ly,” he said.

On the ground dur­ing the protests were the dif­fer­ent arms of the po­lice ser­vice sup­port­ed by sol­diers from the T&T De­fence Force Reg­i­ment. This, Ja­cob said, will con­tin­ue go­ing for­ward to mit­i­gate any fur­ther ac­tion in the com­ing days.

“We are sus­tain­ing our pres­ence, ac­tive pres­ence on the road­way un­til such time. We’d just be con­tin­u­ing,” he said.

The protests were sparked by po­lice killings over the week­end. Re­ports in­di­cate that at 3.20 am on Sat­ur­day, six men from var­i­ous ar­eas with­in Laven­tille were re­turn­ing from a par­ty in Co­corite when they were pur­sued by of­fi­cers. It is al­leged the oc­cu­pants in the car shot at po­lice and they re­turned fire, killing three and in­jur­ing the oth­ers. Fa­bi­en Richards, 22 and his nephew Isa­iah Williams, 17, both of St Barb’s, and Niko Williams, 21, of Beetham Gar­dens, were killed in­stant­ly. One oth­er man was al­so shot and said to be in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the hos­pi­tal. The oth­er two men es­caped un­hurt.

How­ev­er, pro­tes­tors re­fute this re­port, say­ing the po­lice were not shot at. The in­ci­dent comes on the heels of the Po­lice Com­plaint Au­thor­i­ty’s (PCA) re­port that of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to cov­er up the killing of PC Clarence Gilkes in Dei­go Mar­tin ear­li­er this year and in­ten­tion­al­ly mis­led the act­ing CoP.

How­ev­er, Ja­cobs yes­ter­day said there is video footage of the in­ci­dent that tran­spired on Sat­ur­day.

“There is in fact, footage that was cap­tured by our main op­er­a­tion cen­tre and is now there, which is ev­i­dence for the in­ves­ti­ga­tor. In fact, when some of these in­ci­dents are hap­pen­ing, it is live cap­tured by our op­er­a­tions cen­tre where the CCTV grid ex­ists, so there is, in fact, footage which was ev­i­dence and pro­vid­ed to the in­ves­ti­ga­tor,” he said.

He said this footage will not be made pub­lic at this time.

“At some stage, con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en but in the ear­ly stage of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it is nec­es­sary that the in­ves­ti­ga­tors deal with it in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner.”

How­ev­er, he said the of­fi­cers in­volved in the shoot­ing have been “side-lined” un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­clude. He said this was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the fam­i­lies of the men who were in­volved in the in­ci­dent when he vis­it­ed them yes­ter­day, short­ly be­fore the press con­fer­ence

“We vis­it­ed some of the fam­i­lies who were af­fect­ed as a re­sult of the shoot­ing on the Beetham just about an hour and a half ago and in­ter­act­ed with them to give them the as­sur­ance that the po­lice stance for the rule of law and the mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Mr Bran­don John. The of­fi­cers in­volved were in fact placed on desk du­ty as we go about this in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” he said.

He said as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion pro­gress­es, the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau may need to join the in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He said the PCA is al­so cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.