The widely shared video an-off duty police officer attempting to take a traffic warden into custody does not help efforts by the T&T Police Service (TTPS) to regain the public’s trust, says president of the Police Social and Welfare Association Inspector Gideon Dickson.
Following the incident in Port-of-Spain on Monday, the officer was placed on suspension. However, Dickson said the video might not tell the entire story.
“From an association perspective, we would want to say that the five-minute segment that we saw on social media, it does not augur well for the attempts by the service to continue to regain public trust and confidence but in the same breath we are saying that the five-minute segment does not tell the entire story,” he said.
CCTV footage of the incident, which was made public yesterday, shows the off-duty officer speaking to three traffic wardens seconds before the incident. He is seen approaching one of the traffic wardens and speaking with her before trying to hold onto her hand.
There is no audio to accompany the footage and it ends before uniformed police officers arrive on the scene.
Dickson, who appealed for witnesses to the incident to come forward, said: “We also would have heard narrative conversations by persons in the background and we are saying for those persons, if in fact they have information and they saw and witnessed what transpired through its entirety, then they ought to contact the relevant authorities in terms of the Professional Standards Bureau or PCA and give that information and the investigation will unfold.”
Dickson said while the word suspension is often used negatively, it is a part of the TTPS’s disciplinary process. He said representatives of the officer have reached out to the association but the officer himself is yet to make contact.
