Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

We are wit­ness­ing pub­lic out­rage fol­low­ing the killing of Joshua Sama­roo and the shoot­ing of his girl­friend, Ka­ia Sealy. Friends of the cou­ple staged two protests last week, ex­press­ing grow­ing dis­trust of the po­lice. They were joined by fam­i­lies of three young men killed in a po­lice shoot­ing on In­de­pen­dence Square on Ju­ly 2, 2022. Those rel­a­tives main­tain the vic­tims were re­turn­ing home from a par­ty in Diego Mar­tin when they were wrong­ful­ly tar­get­ed.

One fa­ther de­scribed the shoot­ing of his son as “an overkill.” The young man was shot ten times; bul­lets pierced the back of his head, arms and back, leav­ing part of his face un­recog­nis­able. Forty-three months lat­er, the fam­i­lies say they still have no of­fi­cial an­swers.

If such mat­ters are al­lowed to fes­ter, an­ti-po­lice sen­ti­ment can deep­en, breed­ing re­sent­ment not on­ly against the Po­lice Ser­vice but al­so the Gov­ern­ment. If the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is to re­build pub­lic trust, re­duc­ing pro­longed in­ves­tiga­tive de­lays must be a pri­or­i­ty.

A busi­ness­woman once de­scribed a fright­en­ing in­ci­dent in which her car was blocked by what ap­peared to be a po­lice ve­hi­cle as she re­turned home. Sus­pect­ing it may have been fake po­lice, she es­caped. Noth­ing fur­ther came of the re­port. No­tably, she had ap­plied for a Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL), re­ceived pro­vi­sion­al ap­proval by a pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­er, but still awaits fi­nal clear­ance. Giv­en stat­ed gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to ease ac­cess to FULs, ex­pe­dit­ing such ap­pli­ca­tions may re­as­sure a pub­lic that feels vul­ner­a­ble.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has de­fend­ed the right of po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate them­selves. How­ev­er, per­cep­tions of bias can arise. The Med­ical Board once faced sim­i­lar con­cerns and re­spond­ed through leg­isla­tive re­form: the Med­ical Board Act 2007 in­tro­duced lay mem­bers from bod­ies such as the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants, the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, strength­en­ing pub­lic over­sight.

Alexan­der says there are four in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Sama­roo mat­ter—by the First Di­vi­sion, Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau, Homi­cide Bu­reau and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty. Di­ver­gent find­ings could cause con­fu­sion, de­lay, du­pli­ca­tion of man­pow­er and re­trau­ma­ti­sa­tion of wit­ness­es. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions must as­sess the ev­i­dence be­fore pro­ceed­ing.

The com­mis­sion­er could ad­vo­cate leg­isla­tive re­forms to stream­line such process­es.

The pur­chase of 1,200 body cam­eras un­der for­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith was a pos­i­tive step. The Ri­al­to study record­ed a rough­ly 59–60 per cent re­duc­tion in use of force and an 87 per cent drop in com­plaints fol­low­ing cam­era de­ploy­ment. Body and dash­board cam­eras are es­sen­tial tools for mod­ern polic­ing. How­ev­er, video rarely cap­tures the full con­text.

Sama­roo sur­ren­dered on­ly af­ter crash­ing his ve­hi­cle fol­low­ing a high-speed pur­suit. Of­fi­cers may still have per­ceived a threat to them­selves or the pub­lic. While the video ap­pears trou­bling, jus­tice re­quires ev­i­dence and due process—not con­clu­sions shaped sole­ly by pub­lic emo­tion.

For bal­ance, I sought the per­spec­tive of ACP Rishi Singh and con­clude with some of his mea­sured re­flec­tions.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is re­spon­si­ble for com­mis­sion­ing and lead­ing the TTPS. This in­cludes re­cruit­ing, ap­point­ing, pro­mot­ing, man­ag­ing, equip­ping, and strate­gi­cal­ly di­rect­ing of­fi­cers to ful­fil the ser­vice’s man­date. These du­ties must be car­ried out with­in the con­sti­tu­tion­al and le­gal frame­work of the Re­pub­lic, re­flect­ing the com­plex­i­ty of po­lice lead­er­ship.

“De­ci­sions can­not be shaped sole­ly by pub­lic per­cep­tion. They must con­sid­er long-term or­gan­i­sa­tion­al per­for­mance and the safe­ty of both cit­i­zens and of­fi­cers. Of­fi­cers must not be dri­ven in­to coun­ter­pro­duc­tive con­ser­vatism that un­der­mines ef­fec­tive polic­ing. At the same time, ac­count­abil­i­ty for ac­tions re­mains es­sen­tial.

“Ro­bust over­sight mech­a­nisms ex­ist. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion pro­vides over­sight. The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty car­ries statu­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions ex­er­cis­es in­de­pen­dent con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty. The courts of the Re­pub­lic are ac­ces­si­ble to those with stand­ing. The me­dia serve as na­tion­al watch­dogs. Re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship re­spects these in­sti­tu­tions and up­holds due process for all par­ties.”

“Un­der cur­rent law, the TTPS is em­pow­ered to bring crim­i­nal charges fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. While pub­lic con­fi­dence may fluc­tu­ate, the record demon­strates co­op­er­a­tion with over­sight bod­ies and in­stances where of­fi­cers have been charged, com­mit­ted, and con­vict­ed when war­rant­ed.”

“The care­ful man­age­ment of in­for­ma­tion dur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions pro­tects due process and pre­serves fair­ness. The Po­lice Ser­vice re­mains com­mit­ted to serv­ing all cit­i­zens and ful­fill­ing its man­date with­in the law.”