An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

With just over one month to go be­fore the year ends, po­lice-in­volved killings have to­talled 54 in­ci­dents up to No­vem­ber 23.

And while there were 13 few­er vic­tims for 2025 so far, com­pared to 80 from 37 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings in 2024 and 39 dead­ly in­ci­dents with 46 vic­tims in 2023, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) con­tin­ues to be con­cerned about the lim­it­ed use of body cam­eras by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

On Mon­day, PCA di­rec­tor David West said, “Since 2014, the Au­thor­i­ty has con­sis­tent­ly em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of body-worn cam­eras as a vi­tal tool to build pub­lic trust, pro­tect both of­fi­cers and cit­i­zens, and strength­en con­fi­dence in polic­ing.”

“The prop­er and con­sis­tent use of these de­vices would pro­vide an es­sen­tial lay­er of trans­paren­cy to in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

He in­sist­ed, “We need more trans­paren­cy in the af­ter­math of these po­lice-in­volved killings. The sub­se­quent in­ves­ti­ga­tion should be swift and trans­par­ent. This is need­ed to in­crease po­lice le­git­i­ma­cy.”

In Sep­tem­ber, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said a con­tract for the pro­vi­sion of 3,000 body cam­eras had been scrapped due to in­flat­ed costs.

The can­cel­la­tion of the $24.9 mil­lion con­tract, which was award­ed in 2024, was con­firmed by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who said it had been ter­mi­nat­ed in or­der to save mon­ey.

Gue­var­ro said the TTPS in­tend­ed to restart the pro­cure­ment process, as re­search had re­vealed the cam­eras could be sourced at a much low­er price than the TTPS had been quot­ed.

Head of the Crim­i­nol­o­gy Unit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Cam­pus in St Au­gus­tine, Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, point­ed to sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by both the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) and the PCA as they re­lat­ed to po­lice-in­volved killings be­tween 2018 and 2022.

There were 48 po­lice killings in 2018, 43 in 2019, 69 in 2020, 34 in 2021, and 55 in 2022, bring­ing the av­er­age num­ber to 49.8 dur­ing that five-year pe­ri­od.

Re­fer­ring to this da­ta, Seep­er­sad ex­plained, “The fig­ures that we are see­ing right now re­al­ly aren’t to the point where they are so wild­ly out­side of this range that we can make any kind of strong claim that po­lice killings are nec­es­sar­i­ly up.”

Seep­er­sad said, “Giv­en that we have used a State of Emer­gency as a crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy for a good pro­por­tion of 2025, and giv­en that po­lice of­fi­cers have ex­tend­ed pow­ers un­der the SoE, one would have ex­pect­ed, giv­en that the num­ber in 2025, would have far ex­ceed­ed that of pre­vi­ous years.”

“It ac­tu­al­ly sug­gests to me that of­fi­cers in the TTPS have ex­er­cised a lot of re­straint in the use of lethal force.

“I think the num­bers are what might be ex­pect­ed, and hon­est­ly, they could have been a lot high­er giv­en the very volatile crime sit­u­a­tion we face in T&T.”

Year - Num­ber of Fa­tal Shoot­ings - Num­ber of Vic­tims

2025 54 (as of 23/11/2025) 67

2024 37 80

2023 39 46