Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the shoot­ing in­ci­dent in Guapo that claimed the lives of a po­lice of­fi­cer and a civil­ian, there is a call for crim­i­nals to put down their guns. It came from Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son, who al­so lament­ed that crim­i­nals are be­com­ing more brazen, even when con­front­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers.

Po­lice Con­sta­ble Kr­ish­na Ba­na­har, 25, and fa­ther of two Hakim Joseph, 44, were fa­tal­ly shot on Wednes­day when of­fi­cers of the South West­ern Di­vi­sion went to St Rose Street in Gon­za­les Vil­lage to ex­e­cute a search war­rant for arms and am­mu­ni­tion at a house.

A se­nior of­fi­cer claimed that Joseph ran when he saw the po­lice and was pur­sued by of­fi­cers. He said Ba­na­har and Joseph were strug­gling as the con­sta­ble at­tempt­ed to re­strain him when an­oth­er man fired at the of­fi­cer. De­tails of what tran­spired next, the se­nior of­fi­cer said, were still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Ba­na­har was pro­nounced dead at the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal around 5.20 pm. The sus­pect, a 35-year-old man, fled the scene but was sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed.

In a state­ment on Wednes­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said the mur­der of the of­fi­cer was “gross­ly dis­con­cert­ing” and “very se­ri­ous cause for con­cern.”

Yes­ter­day, Dick­son said the in­ci­dent showed that crim­i­nals were be­com­ing more em­bold­ened.

“We are see­ing, from where we are, the crim­i­nal el­e­ment be­com­ing more and more brazen. We have al­ready wit­nessed that there is a pro­lif­er­a­tion of high-pow­ered weapons through­out the lengths and breadths of Trinidad and To­ba­go; our porous bor­ders and our weak se­cu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms are not aid­ing in ad­dress­ing the is­sue,” he said.

“As such, the con­fronta­tion by po­lice of­fi­cers with these per­pe­tra­tors with firearms in their pos­ses­sion is be­com­ing more and more preva­lent. We will still call on per­sons to put down their arms, and we will take them be­fore a com­pe­tent ju­ris­dic­tion of the court to be dealt with ac­cord­ing to the law. How­ev­er, some­times it don’t ma­te­ri­alise that way even with our best ef­forts.” 

Dick­son said Ba­na­har’s rel­a­tives will re­ceive the $1 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion, which is avail­able when of­fi­cers are killed while on du­ty. He said this has been hap­pen­ing since 2016, but there is a process that is ini­ti­at­ed when fam­i­lies en­gage the TTPS Fi­nance Branch sec­tion.