Gail Alexan­der

Fear of reprisals from po­lice. That's the rea­son why some peo­ple are afraid to come for­ward with their com­plaints about any mis­con­duct by po­lice in the state of emer­gency, says Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) chair­man Gillian Lucky. But Garfield But­ler is not among those. But­ler, 45, of Wa­ter­hole, Co­corite, has filed a com­plaint with the PCA. "And I'm hop­ing for ac­tion," But­ler said last Fri­day. His ex­pe­ri­ence be­gan around 9.45 pm two Sat­ur­days ago when he was sit­ting on a bridge in Co­corite, he said. "A ve­hi­cle with of­fi­cers drove up and came back down the road," said But­ler, a welder.

But­ler said he said "Good­night" to the fe­male of­fi­cer. The of­fi­cers con­tin­ued dri­ving, he said. Then the ve­hi­cle stopped sev­er­al feet away and re­versed. But­ler said an of­fi­cer came out to his left and the dri­ver, to his right. "The of­fi­cer on the left asked me what I said. I re­peat­ed that I said good­night to the la­dy." But­ler said he was then slammed against the Suzu­ki ve­hi­cle and told to keep his hands on the top. "I was then cuffed be­tween my legs and I was in se­vere pain...so much I peed my pants," he added. But­ler said the of­fi­cer pushed a hand in­to his pock­et ask­ing what was in­side. "I of­fered to pull out my pock­ets since I didn't want any­body plant­i­ng any­thing on me," he added.

He said he pro­duced his wal­let and two Panadols. "I had noth­ing bad-I don't drink or smoke," But­ler said. "Then the of­fi­cer give me one lash be­hind my head and tell me to go to f*** up the hill be­fore he throw me in the riv­er," he said, not­ing he de­tailed all that in his com­plaint to the PCA. But­ler, who said he had nev­er been in jail, ad­mit­ted hav­ing a court mat­ter sev­er­al months ago with a rel­a­tive about stay­ing at a prop­er­ty. He added: "Still, I don't see why these po­lice hit me. I went to the doc­tor and I re­port­ed the mat­ter to St James po­lice and the PCA. I'm still suf­fer­ing pain in my head and groin." The Wa­ter­front com­plex of­fice to which the PCA will soon be mov­ing is far from But­ler's Wa­ter­hole home, but he's hope­ful of at­ten­tion.

PCA chair­man Lucky said the PCA had re­ceived 22 re­ports of al­leged abuse of pow­er by po­lice since the SoE start­ed. The ma­jor­i­ty in­volved al­le­ga­tions that of­fi­cers stole the per­son­al prop­er­ty of peo­ple while con­duct­ing search­es, Lucky said. Oth­ers were about al­leged po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and ex­ces­sive use of force, she added. She said, PCA's ten in­ves­ti­ga­tors tried to ver­i­fy com­plaints and de­ter­mine if to send them to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion or any oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion. But Lucky al­so ad­mits: "I've re­ceived calls from per­sons and in­ter­act­ed with oth­ers who've told me they have been the vic­tims of po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and ex­ces­sive use of force by po­lice in the SOE.

"But they're not pre­pared to make a for­mal com­plaint to PCA un­til the SoE ends be­cause they're afraid if they make the com­plaint, the po­lice would find out and they would be vic­timised dur­ing the SOE as po­lice have en­hanced pow­ers," she said. Lucky ad­vised such peo­ple to keep a thor­ough record of the in­ci­dent to as­sist when they chose to make a com­plaint. "I al­so still en­cour­age them to re­port it to the po­lice sta­tion," she added. She said with such fears of in­tim­i­da­tion and reprisals, the PCA must en­sure com­plainants were guar­an­teed con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of com­plaint.

Some form of wit­ness pro­tec­tion might al­so be nec­es­sary de­pend­ing on cir­cum­stances, she added. "For years we've heard about rogue el­e­ments in the Po­lice Ser­vice. That's why it's im­por­tant the PCA ful­fils its man­date," Lucky said. The PCA, how­ev­er, did not han­dle mat­ters con­cern­ing the De­fence Force, against whom there were nine com­plaints from cit­i­zens, De­fence Force Cap­tain Al Alexan­der con­firmed last Fri­day. Com­plaints came from peo­ple in Gas­pa­ree, Point Fortin and San­ta Cruz. Two sol­diers were pe­nalised while six oth­er com­plaints are un­der probe. One in­ci­dent al­leged­ly oc­curred at Gas­par Grande, which the Sep­tem­ber 17 Trinidad Guardian Pub­lic Af­fairs col­umn aired af­ter PNM Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Amery Browne said he'd re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from a fam­i­ly in his con­stituen­cy about it.

Browne said his in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ed the fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing mem­bers from Cana­da, were at the Gas­pa­ree house the week­end be­fore and were awok­en at 9 am by about 15 uni­formed armed sol­diers. It was al­leged sol­diers put guns to the youths' heads, ter­rorised, slapped, threat­ened, abused and made sex­u­al ad­vances to­wards the girls. It was al­so al­leged the place was ran­sacked sev­er­al times, and sol­diers in­sist­ed on ob­tain­ing "stacks of guns and drugs to make a bust." Fur­ther, it was al­leged sol­diers "helped them­selves to beers in the fridge, chal­lenged peo­ple to a fight, stole a Black­ber­ry, and at­tempt­ed to take one per­son's rings." Browne said one youth al­leged­ly suf­fered a rup­tured eardrum af­ter be­ing slapped and one per­son had a gun put to his head and was or­dered to say "where the am­mu­ni­tion was."

Browne added last Fri­day:

"In­ci­dents have af­fect­ed res­i­dents from Co­corite, Sime­on Road and Blue Range to the Gas­pa­ree sit­u­a­tion...But this SoE has run its course, col­lapsed due to ir­rel­e­vance and must now be re­moved. "Gov­ern­ment has yet to lev­el with the pub­lic on re­ports of se­ri­ous abus­es that have oc­curred be­cause they have placed im­mense pow­er in the hands of ser­vice mem­bers, many of whom have been quite dis­grun­tled and not ful­ly trained to op­er­ate un­der these cir­cum­stances," he added. A PNM team of at­tor­neys for those af­fect­ed by the SoE has al­so field­ed 16 com­plaints from North, East, West and Cen­tral, vice chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is added.

Robin­son-Reg­is said most in­volved al­leged po­lice mis­con­duct. Com­plaints came from 15 men and one woman. She added: "One was a sit­u­a­tion where po­lice al­leged­ly tried to get some­one to sign a state­ment say­ing they were a gang mem­ber. Six oth­er cas­es in­volved fam­i­lies po­lice al­leged­ly ha­rassed to find out where peo­ple were lo­cat­ed in­clud­ing break­ing down their doors to en­ter."