Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter

The Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (PSS­WA) be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments about the in­crease in po­lice-in­volved killings is not on­ly a mo­ti­va­tor to of­fi­cers, but can al­so serve as a much-need­ed warn­ing to crim­i­nals.

It was ear­li­er this month that the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) high­light­ed what it called an alarm­ing in­crease in po­lice- in­volved killings.

Guardian Me­dia has re­ceived con­flict­ing sta­tis­tics in this re­gard. The PCA says it has record­ed 21 such cas­es so far for 2024, while the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has that fig­ure at 37.

When asked about the PCA’s con­cerns over the rise in such killings dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, the Prime Min­is­ter seem­ing­ly came to the de­fence of the of­fi­cers, not­ing that the rea­son for the in­crease could be that more crim­i­nals are feel­ing em­bold­ened to shoot at the po­lice.

“The fact that there are more shoot­ings by the po­lice, the in­fer­ence you can draw from that is that more peo­ple have shot at the po­lice, or that more peo­ple have armed them­selves with the view that if the po­lice show up, they will shoot their way out of it. Or that more arms are com­ing in­to the coun­try to al­low more peo­ple to be able to car­ry out that point of view,” Dr Row­ley said.

He added, “If no peo­ple are en­gag­ing in shoot­ing at the po­lice, then I have no doubts that the num­ber of in­stances where the po­lice re­turn fire and peo­ple get hit, that will go down.”

Those com­ments were mu­sic to the ears of PSS­WA pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son, who told Guardian Me­dia, “The state­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter, we view it as mo­ti­va­tion­al for us, the po­lice. It was good to hear that we have high of­fice hold­ers sup­port­ing the ef­forts of the po­lice of­fi­cers to try to push back against what is tak­ing place here.”

More­over, ASP Dick­son be­lieves Dr Row­ley helped in their crime fight be­cause his words can be in­ter­pret­ed as a se­ri­ous warn­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for gun-tot­ing crim­i­nals.

Dick­son said he wants clips from the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment to cir­cu­late on Tik­Tok and oth­er so­cial me­dia plat­forms which crim­i­nals use fre­quent­ly.

“You can al­so use those state­ments and put it in sound­bites and play it for those po­ten­tial crim­i­nals and those who are in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, vi­o­lent crimes in par­tic­u­lar, let­ting them know that there are con­se­quences to their ac­tions if they choose to con­front the po­lice,” Dick­son ex­plained.

Not­ing the com­men­tary on so­cial me­dia every time there is a po­lice-in­volved killing, Dick­son said he was un­aware of any of­fi­cer who goes out on pa­trol with the pre­med­i­tat­ed in­ten­tion to shoot first. How­ev­er, he said the re­al­i­ty is that some crim­i­nals are not pre­pared to go through the le­gal sys­tem.

“We are not tak­ing away any­thing from what we have to do in terms of in­ves­ti­gat­ing mat­ters and tak­ing mat­ters be­fore the court, but right now with what is tak­ing place, those who have heavy ar­tillery out­side here, it ap­pears they have no in­ten­tion of go­ing to court. When they are com­mit­ting the crimes as heinous as the one in Moru­ga and oth­er re­lat­ed crimes, they have al­ready cho­sen their path­way,” Dick­son said.

Dick­son ac­knowl­edged that some mem­bers of the pub­lic are crit­i­cal of their ac­tions when they are forced to shoot back and crim­i­nals, but he won­dered if they un­der­stood the cal­i­bre of weapons that are be­ing used against them.

“So, there is no sec­ond op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress a sit­u­a­tion when you are con­front­ed by bul­lets. Be­cause when you go to a crime scene now, you are not see­ing one or two pro­jec­tiles ly­ing around, no, you are see­ing the place laden with am­mu­ni­tion. Long time it used to be just .38, it used to be knife and cut­lass, or a home­made shot­gun. Now you are see­ing heavy ar­tillery out­side there,” Dick­son lament­ed.

He added that these are some dan­ger­ous times and while mem­bers of the pub­lic have the lux­u­ry from analysing sit­u­a­tions from afar and af­ter the fact, of­fi­cers are of­ten con­front­ed with sit­u­a­tions that re­quire them to make split-sec­ond de­ci­sions to pre­serve their lives and to pro­tect the pub­lic.