Geisha Kow­lessar

Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor Gillian Lucky is up­set over the re­fusal of po­lice to com­ply with PCA di­rec­tives to help in un­rav­el­ling sus­pect­ed cas­es of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings, say­ing this has led to a break­down in law and or­der with­in the rank and file of the Po­lice Ser­vice.She made the state­ment dur­ing a press brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, as she not­ed there had been a 100 per cent in­crease in po­lice killings from the year 2011 to 2014."Clear­ly, there is fla­grant vi­o­la­tion by cer­tain po­lice of­fi­cers to en­sure com­pli­ance with time­lines and to en­sure thor­ough­ness and fair­ness in in­ves­ti­ga­tions," Lucky said.

She al­so ex­pressed con­cern that the de­tec­tion rate for mur­ders was nine per cent, say­ing this was the sit­u­a­tion some ten years ago.There have been 26 po­lice killings for the year but the PCA is on­ly mon­i­tor­ing 19 as those fell un­der the re­mit of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, she said. Of the 19 killings, eight were in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion and six in Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.She said co-op­er­a­tion from the po­lice was crit­i­cal to the PCA's abil­i­ty to func­tion prop­er­ly.She added: "It is on­ly in find­ing truth that we can en­sure jus­tice. With­in re­cent times there have been sev­er­al en­ti­ties and in­di­vid­u­als who sug­gest that po­lice of­fi­cers who shoot civil­ians are do­ing no wrong.

"But be­fore reach­ing such an in­ves­ti­ga­tion there must be an in­de­pen­dent and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The PCA does not pre­judge any is­sue."It in­sists on time­ly, thor­ough and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the Po­lice Ser­vice. Un­for­tu­nate­ly these have not been met by the Po­lice Ser­vice in sev­er­al in­stances." Lucky said there was too big a de­lay be­tween the time of the shoot­ings and when the PCA was in­formed, adding there was al­so a "great time­line" be­fore crit­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions could be com­plet­ed.She said Williams al­so an­nounced that body cam­eras for po­lice would be in­tro­duced in Sep­tem­ber.

Is­sues raised with Williams

Among the is­sues Lucky dis­cussed with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams was whether a body had been formed to deal with fa­tal shoot­ings of civil­ians and po­lice.

Lucky said Williams said while there were ini­tia­tives to have such a body for­mal­ly im­ple­ment­ed, the move must be ap­proved by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, who has to take the mat­ter to Cab­i­net.She said in the in­ter­im there was the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau of the­P­o­lice Ser­vice, head­ed by ACP Pe­ter Reyes.On pro­vid­ing the PCA with greater de­tails, Lucky said the PCA was giv­en the as­sur­ance that would be done.Re­gard­ing le­gal ad­vice, Lucky said the PCA had hired a lawyer who would be deal­ing with all the in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence with re­spect to po­lice killings.She said the PCA al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the body be in­formed when a po­lice killing oc­curred so it could al­so vis­it the scene in a time­ly man­ner.

Glar­ing ex­am­ples of dis­re­spect

In mak­ing ref­er­ence to sev­er­al mat­ters, some dat­ing back to be­fore the PCA was es­tab­lished in De­cem­ber 2010, Lucky said that was im­por­tant to show the lag in the sub­mis­sion of in­ves­tiga­tive files by the po­lice to the PCA.

Lucky made ref­er­ence to four spe­cif­ic cas­es:

�2 Christo­pher Greaves was killed in a shoot­ing in­volv­ing the po­lice on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2013.One ver­sion was that Greaves had a so­da or bot­tle in his hand and was shot dead by po­lice on pa­trol.

Po­lice claimed Greaves had a gun and shot at them. Lucky said they made a re­quest for the re­port since Jan­u­ary 27, 2014. She said the PCA vis­it­ed the scene short­ly af­ter Greaves's killing and when the ini­tial file was re­quest­ed crit­i­cal doc­u­ments were miss­ing, in­clud­ing a UK re­port which test­ed the re­cov­ered gun."As there was no foren­sic ev­i­dence to sup­port one ver­sion to the oth­er, this par­tic­u­lar piece of in­for­ma­tion was deemed crit­i­cal by the PCA. To date the PCA is not in pos­ses­sion of that sci­en­tif­ic find­ing with re­spect to the firearm."Fur­ther, the state­ments of three of the po­lice of­fi­cers are dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 6, 2013 and while some might con­sid­er that ac­cept­able, with re­spect to the fourth of­fi­cer in­volved in the mat­ter, that state­ment was dat­ed Oc­to­ber 1, 2013," Lucky said.De­scrib­ing this as un­ac­cept­able, Lucky said Stand­ing Or­der 4016 man­dates im­me­di­ate re­ports be made when po­lice were in­volved in shoot­ings.

�2 The shoot­ing death of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Anil Per­sad was al­so brought to the fore. He was killed while on du­ty on May 12, 2011.Lucky said al­most two years af­ter Per­sad's death the PCA had re­quest­ed "yet again" the name of the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer and a copy of the file."We had writ­ten in No­vem­ber of 2012 and in Jan­u­ary of 2013 and we re­ceived no re­sponse."On Jan­u­ary 13 , this year, we sent a let­ter to the po­lice com­mis­sion­er in which we had height­ened this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter and sev­er­al oth­er mat­ters which the PCA re­mained wait­ing to get re­spons­es," Lucky said.

�2 Naim Dean, 21, was shot dead by a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer (SRP) on April 11, 2014, in Glen­coe.Lucky said from the day of the killing to June 4, 2014, no state­ment was pro­vid­ed by the po­lice in­volved in the in­ci­dent. She said on Tues­day she was told that the in­ves­ti­ga­tor in charge of the probe did "even­tu­al­ly" re­ceive a state­ment from the SRP."When I spoke to the po­lice of­fi­cer in charge of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he in­formed me he was in pos­ses­sion of the state­ment and it is dat­ed June 4, 2014 and the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tor re­ceived it on­ly last Fri­day."This is on­ly af­ter some two months with­out any ex­pla­na­tion giv­en to the PCA that this par­tic­u­lar of­fi­cer gave his ver­sion of what oc­curred. On­ly min­utes be­fore I came in­to the room to ad­dress the me­dia did I re­ceive a copy of that state­ment," Lucky said.

�2 George "Ozzie" Ash­by was shot and killed by po­lice on Jan­u­ary 23, 2009. Lucky said on Jan­u­ary 7, 2010, a mag­is­trate or­dered an in­quest but to date none was held."The PCA took on this mat­ter, even­tu­al­ly tracked down the po­lice file, was able to speak to the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer and was able to con­firm that up to ear­ly this year, the file had not been sent to the court so that the in­quest could be­gin... that is not jus­tice," Lucky added.