The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has launched an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a video which al­leged­ly shows a po­lice of­fi­cer as­sault­ing a man. In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the PCA said the video ti­tled Po­lice In­de­pen­dence Bru­tal­i­ty was brought to its at­ten­tion when it went vi­ral via the In­ter­net. The video was broad­cast on sev­er­al so­cial net­work­ing sites in­clud­ing Face­book and YouTube.

The 57-sec­ond video de­picts two of­fi­cers, one dressed in po­lice uni­form and the oth­er in plain­clothes. In the video, the two of­fi­cers were shown hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with sev­er­al peo­ple, dur­ing which the of­fi­cer in plain­clothes al­leged­ly slapped a man be­fore ar­rest­ing him. The of­fi­cer is al­so shown re­veal­ing a con­cealed firearm pri­or to mak­ing the ar­rest. The au­thor­i­ty said al­though no po­lice re­port was made by the al­leged vic­tim in the short video, it (the PCA) had au­thor­i­ty un­der the Po­lice Com­plaints Act.

"The PCA likens this most re­cent in­ci­dent to the use of ex­ces­sive force by a spe­cif­ic mem­ber of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) at the Pan Trin­ba­go Panora­ma semi­fi­nals ear­li­er this year. "The PCA con­tin­ues to hold its po­si­tion of ze­ro-tol­er­ance for un­nec­es­sary use of force against cit­i­zens of our coun­try by mem­bers of the TTPS," the re­lease said. The PCA ap­pealed to mem­bers of the pub­lic with in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing this in­ci­dent to con­tact them at 800-2PCA or via email at in­fo@pca.org.tt.