Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

As demon­stra­tions con­tin­ue over the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing that killed Joshua Sama­roo and in­jured his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, sev­er­al pro­test­ers have ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over what they de­scribe as a lack of pub­lic en­gage­ment.

Sama­roo and Sealy were shot fol­low­ing a high-speed chase by po­lice of­fi­cers in St Au­gus­tine on Jan­u­ary 20. Po­lice have claimed that Sama­roo fired at them first, prompt­ing them to re­turn fire; how­ev­er, this ac­count has been strong­ly dis­put­ed by some ob­servers.

Se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia re­port­ed­ly shows of­fi­cers open­ing fire on Sama­roo’s ve­hi­cle de­spite ap­par­ent at­tempts to sur­ren­der.

Speak­ing dur­ing a protest out­side the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day, ac­tivist and Sealy’s friend Alis­sa Phillip lament­ed the pub­lic’s lim­it­ed re­sponse, stress­ing that po­lice mis­con­duct and ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings af­fect so­ci­ety as a whole.

“We are not sup­posed to be pro­mot­ing a protest like it’s an all-in­clu­sive fete,” Phillip said. “This doesn’t just af­fect us or Joshua and Ka­ia… it af­fects the en­tire­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We can­not re­main com­pla­cent. If we do not speak up, they will con­tin­ue to walk all over us, think­ing, ‘Tri­nis for­get af­ter two weeks.’ This af­fects all of us.”

Phillip said Sealy re­mains hos­pi­talised and paral­ysed from the waist down, still re­cov­er­ing from the shoot­ing. She added that she was per­son­al­ly dis­traught for be­ing un­able to at­tend Sama­roo’s fu­ner­al last week.

Re­fer­ring to re­ports that two men sur­ren­dered to po­lice af­ter an of­fi­cer was shot in Tu­na­puna on Mon­day night, Phillip said their de­ci­sion like­ly saved their lives.

“We know af­ter an of­fi­cer is shot, the po­lice would be out for blood. Sur­ren­der­ing al­lows them to be in full view of the pub­lic or oth­er of­fi­cers to en­sure noth­ing un­to­ward hap­pens,” she said.

Phillip not­ed that yes­ter­day’s protest marked the third such demon­stra­tion out­side the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion.

She promised more protests even af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son, an­tic­i­pat­ing a stronger pub­lic re­sponse by then.

She al­so dis­missed claims on so­cial me­dia that ear­li­er protests out­side Par­lia­ment and the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

An­oth­er pro­test­er, who asked to be iden­ti­fied as Keon The Cre­ator, echoed con­cerns about the lack of pub­lic sup­port. He warned that po­lice bru­tal­i­ty af­fects all seg­ments of so­ci­ety, and with­out prop­er over­sight, any­one could be a po­ten­tial vic­tim.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go, wake up. This is two peo­ple now, but it could be any mem­ber of your fam­i­ly in the fu­ture,” he said.

“You have a chance now to stand with us and say you will not ac­cept this.”

When asked about High Court Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad’s re­cent sug­ges­tions to record ques­tion­able po­lice con­duct, one pro­test­er said while it would be ide­al, do­ing so of­ten prompts hos­tile or vi­o­lent re­spons­es from some of­fi­cers.

“We reg­u­lar­ly pull out our phones to record, and they treat us as if we are at­tack­ing them, or as if the phone it­self is a weapon,” he said.

While the demon­stra­tion took place, sev­er­al of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing ACP Area North-East Rishi Singh, main­tained a vis­i­ble pres­ence near­by.