Brent Zephyrine

Ever since the im­po­si­tion of the state of emer­gency and the pub­lic out­cry fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct at the hands of cer­tain mem­bers the T&T Reg­i­ment-of­fi­cers who, un­like their po­lice coun­ter­parts, have no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marks (num­bers) on dis­play-ques­tions con­tin­ue to sur­face as to how com­plaints against these sol­diers can be ef­fec­tive­ly pur­sued. When con­tact­ed by the Sun­day Guardian, Civ­il Mil­i­tary Af­fairs Of­fi­cer of the T&T De­fence Force Al Alexan­der at­tempt­ed to al­lay those con­cerns, though he dis­tanced him­self from re­veal­ing the to­tal lo­gis­tics sur­round­ing the is­sue of "iden­ti­fy­ing" the of­fi­cers in ques­tion. "While I un­der­stand the va­lid­i­ty of your ques­tion, I would not want to go in­to too much de­tail as to how we iden­ti­fy per­sons (al­leged of wrong­do­ing). But, of course, if we were to look at the time and place where these in­ci­dents are al­leged to have oc­curred, these things will nar­row down the al­leged per­pe­tra­tors.

"Once we re­ceive the in­for­ma­tion, we will act on it be­cause the Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer of the Reg­i­ment is very in­tol­er­ant of any use of ex­ces­sive force as it does not com­ply with how we're ex­pect­ed to in­ter­face with mem­bers of the pub­lic (rules of en­gage­ment)," he said. Alexan­der added that of the nine com­plaints (as at Sep­tem­ber 30) made against of­fi­cers for use of "ex­ces­sive force", one per­son dis­con­tin­ued pur­su­ing the com­plaint while it was found in an­oth­er, that "there were no grounds" to pur­sue the mat­ter. He added: "The oth­er sev­en were in­ves­ti­gat­ed and they are cur­rent­ly at a cer­tain sta­tus, mean­ing, some is­sues will be go­ing to court mar­tial while some of our peo­ple were charged or giv­en what we would call 'days', which is a sort of in­ter­nal lock­down."

While Alexan­der was not able to pro­vide an up­date on the sta­tis­tics with re­gards to com­plaints of abuse on the part of sol­diers up to late yes­ter­day, he re­vealed that at least one such in­ci­dent was re­port­ed just yes­ter­day. Alexan­der said peo­ple de­sirous of lodg­ing a com­plaint against a mem­ber of the De­fence Force may do so ei­ther by call­ing its hot­line num­ber-800-8833-or by do­ing a "walk-in to any mil­i­tary camp", and such com­plaints would be "di­rect­ed to our in­ves­ti­ga­tions of­fi­cers" and the mat­ter would be pur­sued ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

"If we have found ev­i­dence to sup­port what the claimant has made, then we would ask that such per­sons (ac­cused) be iden­ti­fied and they would be re­quired to sub­mit a writ­ten re­port of what tran­spired (or where they were) dur­ing the pe­ri­od that the al­leged in­ci­dent oc­curred. "Fol­low­ing this, a Board of En­quiry (BOI) would be con­vened to ex­am­ine the facts," he ex­plained. Alexan­der said where ev­i­dence had been found to sug­gest that the al­leged in­ci­dent oc­curred, the ac­cused would be tried by his Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer if it was a mi­nor in­ci­dent, or to the mil­i­tary court mar­tial, where he could ei­ther be "im­pris­oned or thrown out of the or­gan­i­sa­tion" if his/her ac­tions were con­sid­ered to be of a se­ri­ous na­ture.