The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) host­ed a vis­it by Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, De­vesh Ma­haraj, on Thurs­day.

Ma­haraj was ac­com­pa­nied by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Trudy Lewis of the Min­istry of Jus­tice. The vis­it took place at the PCA’s head of­fice lo­cat­ed on Lev­el 24, Tow­er D, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port of Spain.

Ma­haraj and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Lewis held dis­cus­sions with PCA Di­rec­tor David West and Deputy Di­rec­tor Michelle Solomon-Baksh. The dis­cus­sions ad­dressed the PCA’s man­date, op­er­a­tional mat­ters, and the au­thor­i­ty’s fo­cus on po­lice ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the PCA, the meet­ing in­clud­ed ex­changes on cur­rent pri­or­i­ties and on­go­ing work to en­sure that the rights of cit­i­zens are up­held. The Au­thor­i­ty ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the en­gage­ment and the in­ter­est shown by the Min­istry of Jus­tice in its func­tions.

The PCA not­ed that the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Au­thor­i­ty and the Min­istry is key to the im­prove­ment of over­sight mech­a­nisms and build­ing trust in the po­lice ser­vice. It al­so stat­ed that the vis­it sig­nals a con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing the goals of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.

The Au­thor­i­ty said it re­mains com­mit­ted to its role in re­ceiv­ing, in­ves­ti­gat­ing, and mon­i­tor­ing com­plaints from the pub­lic con­cern­ing al­leged mis­con­duct by po­lice of­fi­cers. It added that it looks for­ward to fur­ther en­gage­ment with the Min­istry in strength­en­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­works.

The PCA is an in­de­pen­dent body es­tab­lished to over­see the con­duct of po­lice of­fi­cers and to en­sure pub­lic con­fi­dence in the op­er­a­tions of law en­force­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.