RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) head David West is em­pha­sis­ing the crit­i­cal role of body cam­eras in law en­force­ment.

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic at a Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach Pro­gramme on Tues­day at City Hall Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain, West un­der­scored how these de­vices of­fered a dual ben­e­fit of pro­tect­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors and po­lice of­fi­cers, while en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Body cam­eras are es­sen­tial in safe­guard­ing of­fi­cers from false claims and pro­vid­ing an ob­jec­tive record of events,” West ex­plained.

He not­ed that in sce­nar­ios where al­le­ga­tions were made against of­fi­cers, these cam­eras could “show you ex­act­ly what hap­pened.”

West cit­ed an ex­am­ple where, if of­fi­cers had been wear­ing body cam­eras dur­ing a house vis­it, the footage would have re­vealed whether mon­ey was stolen or not, and would have clear­ly doc­u­ment­ed their move­ments with­in the home.

In ad­di­tion to record­ing vi­su­al ev­i­dence, body cam­eras are equipped with GPS tech­nol­o­gy that al­lows in­ves­ti­ga­tors to ver­i­fy the lo­ca­tion and move­ment of of­fi­cers. West said this fea­ture en­sured ac­cu­ra­cy and in­tegri­ty in in­ves­ti­ga­tions, as GPS da­ta could be cross-ref­er­enced with of­fi­cers’ state­ments.

“Once the footage is down­loaded, we can cor­rob­o­rate the GPS da­ta with what the of­fi­cers say,” he added.

West al­so ad­dressed the grow­ing con­cern over po­lice mis­con­duct, em­pha­sis­ing the rise in com­plaints against of­fi­cers over the years.

The PCA, he stressed, was an in­de­pen­dent, civil­ian-run or­gan­i­sa­tion with no co­er­cive pow­ers, re­in­forc­ing that “there are no po­lice of­fi­cers work­ing in the PCA. We can­not ar­rest, pros­e­cute, or charge any­one.”

This struc­ture, he not­ed, en­sured a lev­el of in­de­pen­dence from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

He shared sta­tis­tics to high­light the in­creas­ing pub­lic com­plaints.

“From Oc­to­ber 2024 to Sep­tem­ber 2015, we re­ceived 552 ini­tial re­ports. Fast for­ward to Sep­tem­ber 16 of this year, and we’ve seen 7,971 ini­tial re­ports,” he stat­ed.

Out of these re­ports, 4,588 com­plaints were of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered. The PCA re­ferred 573 of these cas­es to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for po­ten­tial reg­u­la­to­ry breach­es and 127 cas­es to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal of­fences. The PCA al­so pro­vid­ed ad­vice to the Com­mis­sion­er on 233 cas­es, of­ten when an in­ves­ti­ga­tion did not meet the stan­dard for an of­fence but iden­ti­fied ar­eas where po­lice prac­tices could im­prove.

West al­so drew at­ten­tion to a dis­turb­ing trend: the rise in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

“From Jan­u­ary 2015 to now, there have been 329 po­lice shoot­ings, with 412 vic­tims,” he said, call­ing the sta­tis­tics “quite alarm­ing.”

The year­ly fig­ures have fluc­tu­at­ed, with no­table spikes, in­clud­ing 54 shoot­ings in one re­cent year.

Re­gard­ing these po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings, he said, the PCA had for­ward­ed 15 cas­es to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, 22 to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), and two cas­es to both en­ti­ties.

To en­hance trans­paren­cy, West high­light­ed a re­cent im­prove­ment: “With the amend­ment, we can now re­quest a sta­tus up­date three months af­ter sub­mit­ting a file to the DPP or Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. This al­lows us to track progress and en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.” De­spite these steps, West ac­knowl­edged that the PCA’s role is lim­it­ed by its re­liance on oth­er stake­hold­ers in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. “We may not al­ways get it right, or the DPP and Com­mis­sion­er might see things dif­fer­ent­ly, but the fact re­mains that more pros­e­cu­tions should oc­cur once they agree with our find­ings,” he con­clud­ed.