Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to re­fo­cus its ef­forts on sourc­ing body-worn cam­eras (BWCs) for po­lice of­fi­cers, in a bid to en­sure a high­er stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in dai­ly polic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

On Fri­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der an­nounced that a $24.9 mil­lion con­tract for 3,000 body cam­eras had been ter­mi­nat­ed.

Speak­ing dur­ing a sit­ting of the Sen­ate, Alexan­der ex­plained that the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed “in a bid to save mil­lions of dol­lars.” He not­ed that while the con­tact was ter­mi­nat­ed, the ac­qui­si­tion of body cam­eras was still a pri­or­i­ty, re­fer­ring to them as part of the tools for po­lice of­fi­cers.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email, a spokesper­son for the PCA re­ferred to the lat­est de­vel­op­ment as con­cern­ing, not­ing an in­crease in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Jan­u­ary 2025.

Da­ta pro­vid­ed showed that from Jan­u­ary 1 to Sep­tem­ber 23, 2025, there have been 29 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings.

For the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year, there were 23.

“While the PCA recog­nis­es the du­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers to de­fend them­selves in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, the use of BWCs is es­sen­tial to en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and fair­ness in these in­ci­dents,” the PCA of­fi­cial said.

“Since 2014, the PCA has con­sis­tent­ly em­pha­sised the crit­i­cal role of BWCs in trans­paren­cy, strength­en­ing pub­lic trust, safe­guard­ing both of­fi­cers and cit­i­zens, and re­in­forc­ing con­fi­dence in polic­ing.

“The PCA there­fore urges that the ac­qui­si­tion of BWCs re­main a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty for the TTPS.”

Last week, there were two sep­a­rate po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings which led to the deaths of three men.

Last Sun­day af­ter­noon, po­lice said of­fi­cers of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit (NCDG­IU) re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that two men were plan­ning a rob­bery at a busi­ness­place in Jairas­ingh Vil­lage, San­gre Grande.

Po­lice re­port­ed­ly con­front­ed the men, but were shot at.

Of­fi­cers re­turned fire, killing Shyein Tran­coso and En­rique Gar­cia, an off-du­ty sol­dier.

An AR-15 as­sault ri­fle was found and seized.

Days lat­er, on Thurs­day night, Mustaph Gu­lab was con­front­ed by po­lice on the Cu­napo South­ern Main Road, San­gre Grande, as he was dri­ving.

Po­lice re­port­ed­ly in­ter­cept­ed the car but were shot at by Gu­lab. Of­fi­cers shot at Gu­lab, killing him.

An­oth­er AR-15 was found and seized dur­ing the in­ci­dent.