The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is be­ing ad­vised to rein in the Port-of-Spain Task Force, which has been ac­cused of hunt­ing and killing young black men in de­pressed and high-risk com­mu­ni­ties.

Is­su­ing the call yes­ter­day, as they point­ed to an in­crease in the num­ber of po­lice-in­volved killings with­in re­cent weeks, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ES­CTT) called on act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, “to act with ur­gency and to bring greater over­sight to po­lice be­hav­iour, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to young African men and women.”

The lat­est po­lice-in­volved killing of Richard “Snake” Mar­celle at Beetham Gar­dens on Tues­day night and the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing of Ce­les­tine Richards in Gon­za­les on Au­gust 19 prompt­ed the call af­ter their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies ac­cused the po­lice of ex­e­cut­ing them.

Richards’ fam­i­ly has ac­cused of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Task Force of killing him.

The ES­CTT said, “The fam­i­ly and neigh­bours of Richards have called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of his death, which they re­gard as un­jus­ti­fied. This in­ci­dent has been fol­lowed by a regime of in­tim­i­da­tion in Gon­za­les by what is re­port­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty to be mem­bers of the same Task Force which has left the com­mu­ni­ty in a state of fear.”

They said the es­ca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tion led to po­lice run­ning along Gloster Lodge Road on Au­gust 21, shoot­ing “with­out re­gard for the life and limb of chil­dren or the el­der­ly who live in this com­mu­ni­ty.”

“We call on the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate both the death of Richards and the wan­ton dis­re­gard for the lives of peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty by this Task Force,” the ES­CTT urged.

The ES­CTT called for the ‘hunt­ing’ of young men by this par­tic­u­lar Task Force to stop.

Back in 2020, ES­CTT di­rec­tor of Re­gion­al and Pan African Af­fairs, Khafra Kam­bon, re­mind­ed the coun­try that there were still out­stand­ing is­sues re­gard­ing po­lice be­hav­iour that need­ed to be ad­dressed. These he said, in­clud­ed in­tim­i­da­tion, wan­ton beat­ings, ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings and oth­er dis­crim­i­na­to­ry polic­ing prac­tices in low-in­come com­mu­ni­ties.

Yes­ter­day, the ES­CTT re­it­er­at­ed, “No mat­ter how the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try seems out­side of the con­trol of the po­lice; no mat­ter how street protests be­come fiery; no mat­ter how cit­i­zens clam­our for ‘blood’ in re­tal­i­a­tion to es­ca­lat­ing gun vi­o­lence, it does not al­low those who are des­ig­nat­ed to up­hold the law a free pass to act out­side of the bound­aries of the law and par­tic­u­lar­ly so in low-in­come com­mu­ni­ties.”