An­na-Lisa Paul

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is con­cerned over the in­crease in civil­ian com­plaints against serv­ing of­fi­cers dur­ing the last year, and they have promised that se­nior of­fi­cials will be care­ful­ly look­ing in­to mat­ters go­ing for­ward.

This was the promise from T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer, In­sp Michelle Lewis, dur­ing the week­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

She made the com­ment in re­sponse to ques­tions on the in­for­ma­tion con­tained on com­plaints against of­fi­cers in the 12th An­nu­al Re­port by the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), which was laid in par­lia­ment on Wednes­day.

Lewis said they too had been keep­ing records and had ob­served an “uptick” in the num­ber of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings dur­ing the past two years.

In the PCA’s 126-page re­port, it was re­vealed that 1,028 re­ports of mis­con­duct had been re­ceived from mem­bers of the pub­lic dur­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 2022.

The PCA de­scribed this as a “record-high num­ber of ini­tial re­ports,” which rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of eight per cent and 31 per cent re­spec­tive­ly, when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous re­port­ing pe­ri­ods of 2020-2021 and 2019-2020.

Lewis said the TTPS’s Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) had not­ed the in­crease.

“From our own records, through CA­PA, we have not­ed an uptick in re­la­tion to fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings over the pe­ri­od 2021 and 2022,” Lewis said.

“It is of con­cern to the po­lice, as it in­di­cates that there are mat­ters and in­ci­dents which cause po­lice to have to dis­charge their firearms in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties. And it is very con­cern­ing the amount of il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion we have out there and the com­bat­ive (en­vi­ron­ment) the po­lice have to en­gage in, in the course of their du­ty. So, it is in­deed a con­cern and is en­gag­ing our at­ten­tion.”

How­ev­er, Lewis as­sured that the TTPS had im­ple­ment­ed an en­hanced train­ing com­po­nent for of­fi­cers re­gard­ing when and how the Use of Force Pol­i­cy ought to be ap­plied while in the field.