DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over state­ments at­trib­uted to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, ex­plain­ing his de­ci­sion not to sus­pend of­fi­cers in­volved in the fa­tal shoot­ing of 31-year-old Joshua Sama­roo dur­ing a high-speed chase in St Au­gus­tine.

Sama­roo, a res­i­dent of Val­sayn, was killed on Jan­u­ary 20, an in­ci­dent that al­so left his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, paral­ysed. The com­mis­sion­er has said he re­viewed video footage cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia and found no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for plac­ing the of­fi­cers on sus­pen­sion.

In a re­sponse, how­ev­er, LATT said it was un­clear which footage the com­mis­sion­er re­viewed. The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that the footage it ex­am­ined ap­peared to show of­fi­cers open­ing fire on a ve­hi­cle that had crashed fol­low­ing a pur­suit, with one oc­cu­pant seem­ing­ly at­tempt­ing to sur­ren­der. Ac­cord­ing to LATT, nei­ther oc­cu­pant ap­peared to be re­turn­ing fire.

“The crim­i­nal law in Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­plies equal­ly to law en­force­ment and civil­ians. The use of dead­ly force may give rise to a de­fence of self-de­fence if such force is pro­por­tion­ate and jus­ti­fied giv­en the ex­ist­ing threat to per­son­al safe­ty. Self-de­fence is a com­plete de­fence to the of­fence of mur­der,” LATT said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so ad­dressed the com­mis­sion­er’s ref­er­ence to an al­leged ex­change of gun­fire be­tween po­lice and the oc­cu­pants. LATT said it had not seen footage sup­port­ing such an ex­change, which, if proven, could raise a de­fence of provo­ca­tion — a par­tial de­fence to mur­der that can re­duce a con­vic­tion to manslaugh­ter. LATT stressed that self-de­fence does not jus­ti­fy re­tal­i­a­tion once a threat has passed.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) has ex­pressed full sup­port for Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro’s de­ci­sion not to sus­pend the of­fi­cers.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­so yes­ter­day voiced con­cerns over the com­mis­sion­er’s de­ci­sion.

Young said it would be pre­ma­ture to draw firm con­clu­sions but em­pha­sised the need for an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Speak­ing as a cit­i­zen, he ex­pressed con­cern over the han­dling of the case.

“I must say I am a lit­tle sur­prised, ap­ply­ing the law in cir­cum­stances where there is go­ing to be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, that there was not a de­ci­sion to at least put (of­fi­cers) on some sort of leave whilst an in­ves­ti­ga­tion goes on. But I don’t have all of the facts sur­round­ing this. I am al­ways con­cerned when there is a hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion or a po­ten­tial hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion and that the law is not ap­plied pro­por­tion­al­ly,” Young said.

Beck­les said the killing has re­newed calls for the rou­tine use of body cam­eras by po­lice of­fi­cers. While not­ing that the com­mis­sion­er in­di­cat­ed coun­selling would be of­fered to the of­fi­cers in­volved, she said pri­or­i­ty must be giv­en to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies.

“Coun­selling has to be for the fam­i­ly of Mr Sama­roo, coun­selling has to be for the fam­i­ly of his wife who is now paral­ysed,” she said.

She al­so stressed that the pub­lic must see and un­der­stand the ev­i­dence un­der­pin­ning the com­mis­sion­er’s po­si­tion.

“We must be con­cerned be­cause, at the end of the day, you want to be com­fort­able with how crime is in­ves­ti­gat­ed. If that video footage didn’t ex­ist, we would be none the wis­er and would on­ly re­ly on of­fi­cers’ tes­ti­mo­ny,” Beck­les said.

Beck­les drew par­al­lels with oth­er con­tro­ver­sial cas­es, in­clud­ing the killing of Trinida­di­an fish­er­men Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaro, be­lieved to have died in a US ki­net­ic strike in the Caribbean Sea last Oc­to­ber. She ar­gued that both cas­es high­light trou­bling ques­tions about state ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“You have in­ter­na­tion­al law, and par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause two Trinida­di­ans were in­volved, you want to en­sure that peo­ple are con­fi­dent — that guilt is not pro­nounced pre­ma­ture­ly, and that ev­i­dence is ful­ly pre­sent­ed be­fore de­ci­sions are made,” she said.

She al­so ref­er­enced re­cent fa­tal en­coun­ters in­volv­ing law en­force­ment in the Unit­ed States, not­ing that pub­lic trust re­lies on trans­paren­cy and over­sight.

“We must ad­mit it is al­ways a ques­tion of trust, and it’s im­por­tant for the pub­lic to feel con­fi­dent that mea­sures and tech­nol­o­gy are in place so de­ci­sions can be made re­spon­si­bly,” Beck­les said.