Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Rel­a­tives of slain po­lice­man Clarence Gilkes say their fam­i­ly has been left with a dark void that can nev­er be filled.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the fam­i­ly’s home yes­ter­day, the broth­er of PC Gilkes, Mar­vin Gilkes, said Clarence was the kind of sib­ling any per­son would ask for - kind, giv­ing, am­bi­tious and lov­ing.

“They (killers) don’t know what they do. They don’t know what they do…We are try­ing, but no­body is re­al­ly cop­ing well,” Gilkes said about his broth­er in an in­ter­view.

“We miss him be­ing all-lov­ing, es­pe­cial­ly my sec­ond to last son. He’s tak­ing it very hard. They were very close. Things are so hard right now,” Clarence’s niece Crys­tal said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mar­vin Gilkes, he found out about his broth­er’s death on Fri­day through a nurs­ing col­league at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Gilkes heard from his oth­er broth­er that Clarence had been shot but was ini­tial­ly in­formed that the in­jury wasn’t life-threat­en­ing.

“One of my batch called me back and said, ‘I’m sor­ry.’ I said, ‘What you mean you’re sor­ry?’ She said he passed away when she saw it on­line on a po­lice so­cial me­dia post,” Clarence’s broth­er said.

Asked what he would say to the per­son who shot his broth­er, Mar­vin’s head dropped, then he smiled.

He ad­mit­ted that all sorts of thoughts have gone through his head about what he would like to do to the per­son re­spon­si­ble.

“I’m not a per­son who goes to church but I be­lieve there is a God. So you will say things and you will have hate but you will tell your­self, if I meet him, it will be some­thing, but then lat­er you will come back and say, God, that’s for you to deal with,” he said.

Mar­vin be­lieves his broth­er was killed by an­oth­er one of the coun­try’s lost youth.

He said too many of the ap­proach­es to fight­ing crime are sur­face at­tempts. How­ev­er, he said he be­lieves noth­ing will change, at least un­til some­thing sub­stan­tive is done to change the mind­set of the na­tion’s youth.

“They don’t know what love is, you know. If you tell them, boy, I love you, they think it’s a ho­mo­sex­u­al thing be­cause they don’t un­der­stand what you’re talk­ing about,” Mar­vin said.

“We are not try­ing to change this mind­set and this cul­ture and it’s get­ting worse. The politi­cians are play­ing games…It’s al­ways a quick fix and noth­ing con­tin­ues…I work in a hos­pi­tal and every day there are gun­shot vic­tims—young fel­las. It’s a waste of life.”

Clarence was the third of four Gilkes chil­dren.

Their fa­ther died more than 30 years ago, when Clarence was still in Pri­ma­ry School

Ac­cord­ing to Clarence’s rel­a­tives, de­spite the loss, Clarence was al­ways mo­ti­vat­ed to ex­cel aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. When oth­er chil­dren were giv­ing trou­ble in school - smok­ing and run­ning down girls, Clarence stud­ied. Af­ter leav­ing school, Clarence worked in a near­by gro­cery to save up mon­ey to go to school. He stud­ied hard, they said, and he be­came a cer­ti­fied char­tered ac­coun­tant. Af­ter at­tain­ing his de­gree, he worked as an OJT for a few years, be­fore join­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice around 2012.

“He was re­al­ly good to every­body. I couldn’t ask for a bet­ter broth­er. He was lov­ing and giv­ing. He was no limer. He was no smok­er, no parti­er and he didn’t gam­ble. He was ded­i­cat­ed to his job and ed­u­ca­tion,” Mar­vin re­called.

On Fri­day af­ter­noon, PC Gilkes was shot dur­ing a po­lice ex­er­cise in Rich Plain, Diego Mar­tin. He was pro­nounced dead at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

A man­hunt for the per­pe­tra­tors con­tin­ues.

Mean­while, in a four-minute-long What­sApp voice note over the week­end, one of the main sus­pects claimed he was in­no­cent and will­ing to sur­ren­der to po­lice if giv­en cer­tain guar­an­tees.

“I will glad­ly give up my­self. I re­al­ly want to give up my­self. I have two lit­tle kids and I need to clear my name in this, but on the con­trary, we al­so know the sys­tem we have here,” he said in the record­ing that went vi­ral.

He al­so claimed in the voice note that it was a po­lice of­fi­cer and not him, who shot PC Gilkes.

Yes­ter­day, the sus­pect’s moth­er, Kadaf­fi Rom­ney, vis­it­ed Guardian Me­dia’s St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain to tell his side of the sto­ry.

She claimed that her son has been con­cerned about his safe­ty since 2019—when he took le­gal ac­tion against a po­lice of­fi­cer for al­leged ha­rass­ment. She claimed her son al­so has in­for­ma­tion about po­lice-in­volved cor­rup­tion.

“Once and for all, some­thing has to be done about the rogue cops. As far as I’m con­cerned, my son is in des­per­ate need to save his life. I’m des­per­ate for my son to come out alive. But the most des­per­ate par­ties are those cor­rupt po­lice­men who are do­ing any­thing and every­thing pos­si­ble to elim­i­nate him,” Kadaf­fi Rom­ney said.

Rom­ney al­so ex­pressed con­cern about her youngest son, who was de­tained by po­lice of­fi­cers on Fri­day. She claimed he was beat­en in cus­tody and is be­ing held un­fair­ly by po­lice.

In ad­di­tion to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing the case.