The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) must be com­mend­ed for be­ing so proac­tive in in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports of se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct, po­lice cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal of­fences in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.This in­de­pen­dent cor­po­rate body has, with­in re­cent years, achieved sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess in car­ry­ing out its man­date to the ex­tent that, for the pe­ri­od 2011-2012, it was able to record an im­pres­sive 103 per cent in­crease in com­plet­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

This is a re­mark­able im­prove­ment. Just a few years ago, in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights agency Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al was crit­i­cal of the civil­ian over­sight body's poor track record of in­vest­gat­ing just 20 per cent of the 12,919 com­plaints it re­ceived be­tween 1999 and 2004.

This more ac­tive and ef­fec­tive PCA, with at­tor­ney-at-law Gillian Lucky at the helm, has been par­tic­u­lar­ly vig­i­lant in deal­ing with the probe of the fa­tal Feb­ru­ary 24 Sea Lots ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent which claimed the lives of Haydee Paul and her two daugh­ters Ruthie, eight, and Shaki­ra, sev­en. The three were among six peo­ple knocked down by a car dri­ven by a po­lice of­fi­cer on the Beetham High­way near Pi­o­neer Dri­ve.

Keep­ing a con­stant spot­light on the po­lice probe of that tragedy, the PCA has al­ready high­light­ed sev­er­al flaws in those in­ves­ti­ga­tions so far, in­clud­ing tha fact that blood sam­ples tak­en from the dri­ver were spoilt. The au­thor­i­ty has al­so re­quest­ed video footage of the crash cap­tured by a po­lice CCTV cam­era in Sea Lots and has raised con­cerns about that fact that a breathal­yser test was not ad­min­is­tered un­til sev­er­al hours af­ter the in­ci­dent.

The PCA's com­mit­ment to rig­or­ous and res­olute mon­i­tor­ing of this and oth­er mat­ters in­volv­ing in the po­lice will cer­tain­ly go a long way in boost­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in T&T's jus­tice sys­tem.

The wide­ly held pub­lic per­cep­tion is that jus­tice gen­er­al­ly eludes poor, dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple like the Sea Lots res­i­dents who are the vic­tims in this mat­ter. How­ev­er, the PCA's over­sight of this case en­sures that it can­not be swept un­der the car­pet and that the po­lice would be held ac­count­able if it turns out that they did not prop­er­ly probe this ac­ci­dent.

The PCA has al­so been rais­ing pub­lic aware­ness of its mis­sion and man­date through a se­ries of com­mu­ni­ty out­reach­es. As a re­sult, not on­ly are cit­i­zens now more aware of the roles and func­tions of the agency but the PCA has al­so heard di­rect­ly from the pub­lic at these ses­sions about mat­ters they need to ad­dress.

While this new, re­vi­talised ap­proach by the PCA has on­ly be­come ev­i­dent in the last two or three years, the body was giv­en more teeth with the procla­ma­tion of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act 2006. This new Act, which re­placed the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act, 1993, es­tab­lished the PCA as an in­de­pen­dent cor­po­rate body with the pow­er to in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints with­in its re­mit with­out the in­volve­ment of the po­lice.

Un­der the for­mer au­thor­i­ty all com­plaints were sub­mit­ted to the Po­lice Com­plaints Di­vi­sion (PCD) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion.Now an in­de­pen­dent team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors looks in­to all mat­ters, en­sur­ing that po­lice are not in­ves­ti­gat­ing po­lice. This is def­i­nite­ly a step in the right di­rec­tion.