Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The rel­a­tive of slain St Ann’s welder Ja­mal Williams says she does not know who to trust, as the killers in­volved in his mur­der were re­port­ed­ly dressed in cloth­ing bear­ing po­lice in­signia.

Williams, 25, was lim­ing with a friend on Symond Val­ley Road, St Ann’s, on Thurs­day when a grey Suzu­ki Grand Vi­tara drove near­by, re­versed on­to their street and stopped near them.

Res­i­dents re­port­ed that three gun­men, wear­ing po­lice caps, got out of the ve­hi­cle and shot Williams sev­er­al times. At least one of the sus­pects was al­so wear­ing a bul­let­proof vest bear­ing the mark­ings “Po­lice.” Williams’ friend es­caped by jump­ing in­to a near­by riv­er as the gun­men re­turned to their ve­hi­cle and es­caped.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found a spent 9 mm shell and two cal­i­bre shell cas­ings at the scene.

Williams’ mur­der is the sec­ond in­ci­dent in­volv­ing crim­i­nals wear­ing cloth­ing re­sem­bling of­fi­cial po­lice ap­par­el in un­der a week.

On Wednes­day, a 26-year-old Diego Mar­tin man was beat­en and robbed at his Covi­gne Road home by ban­dits who iden­ti­fied them­selves as po­lice. One of the sus­pects was re­port­ed­ly wear­ing a bul­let­proof vest bear­ing the mark­ings “Po­lice.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, one of Williams’ rel­a­tives, who asked not to be named, said she was wor­ried about the use of cloth­ing re­sem­bling po­lice uni­forms or gear by crim­i­nals.

“All of them had on po­lice uni­form. You don’t know who to be­lieve or to trust, be­cause who you are ex­pect­ing to pro­tect you, you see­ing them killing you, be­cause peo­ple come all in front in uni­form and killing peo­ple.”

In Jan­u­ary 2024, then po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is­sued a memo pre­vent­ing the use of dark blue bat­tle dress uni­forms (BDUs) or “tac­ti­cal uni­forms” to pre­vent the pos­si­bil­i­ty of them be­ing used by crim­i­nals. Di­vi­sion­al Task Force of­fi­cers were al­so or­dered to re­turn to wear­ing grey shirts and navy blue trousers, with BDUs be­ing lim­it­ed to spe­cial tac­ti­cal di­vi­sions.

Asked if she felt there was any­thing else the po­lice could do to pre­vent crim­i­nals from im­per­son­at­ing them, the rel­a­tive said there was a need to clamp down on what she be­lieved was the prac­tice of po­lice of­fi­cers il­le­gal­ly “rent­ing” pieces of their uni­form or “kit” to crim­i­nals.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, re­tired DCP in charge of Op­er­a­tions Jayson Forde said while penal­ties were al­ready in place for im­per­son­at­ing an of­fi­cer, a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign should be in­tro­duced to sen­si­tise the pub­lic about their rights and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of po­lice of­fi­cers to pro­vide iden­ti­fi­ca­tion when asked.

He said the trend of crim­i­nals don­ning po­lice ap­par­el or cloth­ing close­ly re­sem­bling of­fi­cial po­lice ac­ces­sories was a tes­ta­ment to the re­source­ful­ness of law-break­ers.

“They (crim­i­nals) may want to im­i­tate the uni­form they think will give them the best lever­age to suc­ceed with their crim­i­nal in­ten­tions; this gives them the pow­er to stop a per­son in what­ev­er they’re do­ing and cause that per­son to pay at­ten­tion com­pared to oth­er law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.”

Forde added that mem­bers of the pub­lic were well with­in their rights to re­quest to see the of­fi­cial po­lice iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge or card from a uni­formed of­fi­cer to ver­i­fy that they were, in fact, a “le­git­i­mate” po­lice of­fi­cer.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sent ques­tions to the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit seek­ing a re­sponse to the lat­est in­ci­dents, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.