The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has con­firmed that a planned protest sched­uled for to­day out­side the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in sup­port of Ka­ia Sealy has not been au­tho­rised.

TTPS warned that any unau­tho­rised gath­er­ing dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE) will be treat­ed as a breach of emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

“Ap­pro­pri­ate po­lice re­sources will be de­ployed to pre­vent any un­law­ful as­sem­bly at the pro­posed lo­ca­tion. In­di­vid­u­als are strong­ly warned that par­tic­i­pa­tion in such ac­tiv­i­ty places them at se­ri­ous le­gal risk,” the TTPS said in its re­lease.

The protest forms part of the on­go­ing “19 Bul­lets, 19 Protests” cam­paign be­ing led by friends and sup­port­ers of Sealy and her late part­ner Joshua Sama­roo, who was shot by po­lice on Jan­u­ary 20 fol­low­ing a pur­suit.

How­ev­er, or­gan­is­er Alyssa Phillip told sup­port­ers dur­ing an In­sta­gram Live broad­cast on Sun­day night that she had al­ready no­ti­fied au­thor­i­ties about the planned demon­stra­tions.

“I al­ready sent them the no­tice, al­lyuh we need to beat the iron while it is hot,” she said.

“We have more ques­tions to ask. We have our voic­es to be heard, and the main thing with this is that we have to keep this sto­ry hot. We have to keep talk­ing about it, re­gard­less if they take it se­ri­ous­ly or not. We have to con­tin­ue talk­ing about it, whether or not they are pay­ing any at­ten­tion. We have to make sure we are in their ears every time, over and over and over,” she said.

Phillip al­so out­lined plans for fur­ther ac­tion lat­er in the week.

“On Fri­day, we head to Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, but for now the fo­cus is push­ing the protest on Wednes­day, the 27th of May, 4 pm in front of the DPP’s of­fice… We are ask­ing you to come with the same en­er­gy, the same love. The protest to­day went re­al­ly well.”

The TTPS, how­ev­er, said no per­mis­sion has been re­quest­ed or grant­ed for the event.

In a state­ment, the po­lice ser­vice said it was aware of the planned protest cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia but stressed that un­der the State of Emer­gency, au­thor­i­ties have ex­pand­ed pow­ers to pro­hib­it or dis­perse gath­er­ings deemed a risk to pub­lic safe­ty.

“The TTPS ac­knowl­edges the con­cerns be­ing ex­pressed by mem­bers of the pub­lic in re­la­tion to the re­cent de­vel­op­ments in a high-pro­file mat­ter cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“The TTPS recog­nis­es and re­spects the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of cit­i­zens to ex­press their views and to en­gage in peace­ful protest and law­ful pub­lic demon­stra­tion,” the re­lease said.

It al­so warned that un­der Sec­tion 11 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, no per­son shall en­deav­our to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.

On Sun­day, sup­port­ers staged an­oth­er protest out­side the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing un­der the same cam­paign, call­ing for jus­tice for both Sealy and Sama­roo and de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty from se­nior state of­fi­cials.

Pro­test­ers car­ried plac­ards and voiced con­cerns about po­lice con­duct in the case, while al­so call­ing for the res­ig­na­tion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and urg­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ad­dress ris­ing con­cerns over crime and polic­ing.

Phillip al­so dis­put­ed the TTPS ac­count that of­fi­cers had dis­persed Sun­day’s protest, say­ing the gath­er­ing end­ed vol­un­tar­i­ly.

“I no­ticed they made a state­ment im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the protest was over, say­ing that they were sent to dis­perse us and that they dis­persed us. That’s not true. Again with the lies.”

Phillip al­so ref­er­enced an ear­li­er protest on Feb­ru­ary 1, where she said the pres­ence of a ri­ot squad con­tributed to a tense at­mos­phere.

“For the first protest, they re­al­ly tried their best. They brought the ri­ot squad...I left feel­ing a lit­tle un­easy be­cause I feel like they made us leave be­fore we re­al­ly get to ful­ly bring our points across,” she said.

Video footage of the Jan­u­ary fa­tal shoot­ing that cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia ap­peared to show Sama­roo sur­ren­der­ing be­fore he was fa­tal­ly shot. A lat­er slow-mo­tion ver­sion of the footage sug­gest­ed of­fi­cers may have re­turned fire af­ter al­leged­ly be­ing shot at by Sealy.

Po­lice have since charged Sealy with manslaugh­ter in re­la­tion to Sama­roo’s death, as well as three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent at po­lice of­fi­cers.

Phillip: Protest to go on

How­ev­er, or­gan­is­er Alyssa Phillip has since re­ject­ed the TTPS po­si­tion and said the protest would pro­ceed as planned.

In a so­cial me­dia post is­sued to­day, Phillip de­scribed the po­lice state­ment as “noth­ing but in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics at work” and main­tained that no­tice for the event had al­ready been sub­mit­ted.

“The protest is STILL ON for to­mor­row, Wednes­day 27th May 2026 in front the DPP’s of­fice at 4pm,” Phillip wrote.

She said un­der Sec­tion 109 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, or­gan­is­ers are re­quired to give no­tice for a peace­ful stand­still protest and claimed she had done so on Sat­ur­day.

“Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 109 of the sum­ma­ry of­fences act, you do not need per­mis­sion for a peace­ful stand­still protest ...you on­ly need to send no­tice at least 48 hours in ad­vance... which I have done since Sat­ur­day 23rd May,” she wrote.

Phillip al­so chal­lenged con­cerns over pub­lic safe­ty.

“The thing is, the on­ly ones deemed prej­u­dice to pub­lic safe­ty are the TTPS them­selves... as they are the on­ly ones with weapons. Our on­ly weapon as pro­test­ers is our voic­es... and that’s the weapon they are most afraid of.”

She added that at­tor­neys would be present at the demon­stra­tion and warned she would pur­sue le­gal ac­tion if ar­rest­ed.

“My lawyers will al­so be present and just know that I WILL be su­ing for un­law­ful ar­rest if that does in fact take place.”