Kevon Felmine

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams has con­firmed of­fi­cers had been equipped with body cam­eras even be­fore the Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (PSWA) and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) made the rec­om­men­da­tions.

In an in­ter­view af­ter the fu­ner­al ser­vice of com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist and ac­tor Hal Greaves at the First Church of the Open Bible, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Williams said around 50 of­fi­cers in Ch­agua­nas have been work­ing with the body-worn cam­eras. Last month PSWA pres­i­dent, In­sp Michael Seales, and PCA di­rec­tor David West made the calls fol­low­ing the so­cial me­dia out­rage at the po­lice killing of Adalle Gilbert in San Fer­nan­do.

Gilbert, 37, was work­ing on a con­struc­tion site near his Carl­ton Lane home when he was shot dead dur­ing a chase. The rec­om­men­da­tion for body cam­eras was pre­vi­ous­ly made by for­mer PCA di­rec­tor Gillian Lucky in 2012 and 2014.

Yes­ter­day, Williams said: "I've gone be­yond sup­port­ing that. Just to share with you pub­licly, the Po­lice Ser­vice has al­ready start­ed work us­ing body-worn video cam­eras.

"We have start­ed work in Ch­agua­nas and we are pi­lot­ing the use of that with of­fi­cers in Ch­agua­nas. In 2017 we should be ex­pand­ing that. We have start­ed work so that call has been an­swered even be­fore the call was made."

He said Ch­agua­nas was cho­sen for the pi­lot project as it fell with­in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion which was one of the top four di­vi­sions with a high rate of vi­o­lent crimes.

He said in 2016 there had been an in­crease of mur­ders and shoot­ings in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion. In con­trast, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, with 90 less shoot­ings and wound­ings and 40 less mur­ders than the pre­vi­ous year.