A Sea Lots fam­i­ly is prepar­ing to take le­gal ac­tion against the State af­ter they claimed they have en­dured mul­ti­ple po­lice raids, which they al­leged in­volved ex­ces­sive force and abuse of pow­er.

Pro­duc­tion Av­enue, Sea Lots res­i­dent, On­i­ca Jules, claimed her two sons had been un­fair­ly tar­get­ed by po­lice since an of­fi­cer was shot on St Paul Street, Port-of-Spain last year.

Jules al­leged that her sons have al­ready proven their in­no­cence, as CCTV footage con­firmed they were at home at the time of the in­ci­dent.

De­spite this, she claimed po­lice con­tin­ue to tar­get their home, and with the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, the raids have in­ten­si­fied—of­ten oc­cur­ring al­most dai­ly, with of­fi­cers force­ful­ly en­ter­ing the prop­er­ty and break­ing down doors.

Jules fur­ther al­leged that dur­ing the most re­cent raid, of­fi­cers caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to doors. She al­so claimed she was de­tained by po­lice for 72 hours, dur­ing which she was pres­sured to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on un­re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Amid re­cent re­ports of in­ter­nal gang vi­o­lence in the com­mu­ni­ty, Jules ex­pressed con­cerns for her fam­i­ly’s safe­ty, claim­ing that po­lice have even threat­ened her sons’ lives.

The fam­i­ly, who al­so op­er­ates a busi­ness near­by, showed Guardian Me­dia a re­in­forced door they had to in­stall af­ter a pre­vi­ous raid left their prop­er­ty dam­aged.

She sent a mes­sage to those in au­thor­i­ty: “I just want to ask who­ev­er is in charge to look in­to this and give me a lit­tle com­fort be­cause I can’t take it any­more. I re­al­ly can’t take it any­more. It’s re­al­ly hurt­ing.”

Since be­ing de­tained by the po­lice, Jules has ob­tained lawyers to rep­re­sent her fam­i­ly.

Her le­gal team was at her home, and At­tor­ney-at-Law Sephra Alexan­der de­scribed the in­ci­dents as clear vi­o­la­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, par­tic­u­lar­ly un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

De­spite re­ports of po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and prop­er­ty dam­age, no of­fi­cial com­plaints have been lodged with in­sti­tu­tions such as the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty or the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau.

Alexan­der ex­pressed scep­ti­cism about the ef­fec­tive­ness of these chan­nels.

“Quite can­did­ly, I’m not cer­tain that we will be reach­ing out to these par­tic­u­lar in­sti­tu­tions sim­ply be­cause of how ef­fec­tive it may not be.”

The le­gal team is now ex­plor­ing all pos­si­ble av­enues for re­course against the State.

“The next step is sim­ply to get the in­struc­tions from our clients and find the most ef­fec­tive course of ac­tion and pur­sue that,” she af­firmed.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin for a com­ment on the is­sue, how­ev­er, calls went unan­swered.