Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Friends of Ka­ia Sealy and her late part­ner Joshua Sama­roo staged an­oth­er protest out­side the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day, con­demn­ing the charges laid against Sealy, call­ing for a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and de­mand­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

The cou­ple was shot on Jan­u­ary 20 fol­low­ing what po­lice de­scribed as a high-speed chase from Mal­oney to St Au­gus­tine. Video footage of the in­ci­dent, wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, ap­peared to show Sama­roo sur­ren­der­ing be­fore he was fa­tal­ly shot.

A lat­er slow-mo­tion ver­sion of the footage ap­peared to sug­gest of­fi­cers re­turned fire af­ter al­leged­ly be­ing shot at by Sealy. Po­lice sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced that Sealy would be charged with manslaugh­ter in re­la­tion to Sama­roo’s death, as well as three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent at po­lice of­fi­cers.

Yes­ter­day’s pro­test­ers de­scribed the de­ci­sion as un­just.

Ini­tial­ly, mem­bers of Sama­roo’s fam­i­ly pub­licly re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that Sealy was re­spon­si­ble for his death. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed yes­ter­day that rel­a­tives, af­ter con­sult­ing at­tor­ney Criston Williams, were no longer adamant that Sealy did not cause Sama­roo’s death.

Friend of the cou­ple Mari­ah Wal­cott re­ject­ed that claim dur­ing the protest, in­sist­ing Sealy had no crim­i­nal back­ground.

Pro­test­ers car­ried plac­ards ques­tion­ing po­lice con­duct and ex­press­ing con­cern over po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings. Some signs read: “They don’t want us to be­lieve what we see, on­ly what they tell us,” and “Shame on the TTPS.”

Among those present were po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists and fig­ures in­clud­ing Diego Mar­tin West MP Hans Des Vi­gnes, PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hoo, for­mer UNC mem­ber Mar­sha Walk­er and PNM coun­cil­lor Kim­ber­ly Small.

Protest or­gan­is­er Alyssa Phillip called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ad­dress pub­lic con­cerns over crime and polic­ing.

“To the Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try, we are sick and tired of the hide-and-seek games. You need to ad­dress your coun­try. The na­tion is bleed­ing,” Phillip said.

As pro­test­ers shout­ed “Shame,” “Jus­tice for Ka­ia,” “Jus­tice for Joshua,” and “Gue­var­ro must go,” speak­ers al­so called for greater pow­ers to be giv­en to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty to in­de­pen­dent­ly in­ves­ti­gate po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

Po­lice main­tained a heavy pres­ence around the protest. Of­fi­cers mon­i­tored the gath­er­ing from marked and un­marked ve­hi­cles, while oth­ers stood near­by in tac­ti­cal gear.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said of­fi­cers dis­persed the gath­er­ing be­cause of pub­lic safe­ty con­cerns.

The re­lease not­ed that Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions grant law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ty to reg­u­late or dis­perse as­sem­blies where nec­es­sary and to des­ig­nate pro­tect­ed ar­eas re­strict­ing pub­lic ac­cess.

Guardian Me­dia wit­nessed a tense in­ter­ac­tion be­tween of­fi­cers and one pro­test­er, al­though the sit­u­a­tion was quick­ly de­fused and the in­di­vid­ual was al­lowed to re­join the demon­stra­tion.

The protest end­ed with prayers and re­newed calls for jus­tice for Sealy and Sama­roo.

Grif­fith ques­tions po­lice re­sponse

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith raised con­cerns over the de­ci­sion to charge Sealy, ar­gu­ing that pub­licly avail­able video footage did not ap­pear to show of­fi­cers re­act­ing as though they feared for their lives.

Grif­fith, a for­mer cap­tain in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment, said his pro­fes­sion­al train­ing in armed re­sponse did not align with the ac­tions seen in the footage.

“If this la­dy was fir­ing at of­fi­cers, then their im­me­di­ate drill, if prop­er­ly trained, would have been to seek cov­er and then re­turn fire,” Grif­fith said.

“This is not a Ram­bo movie where the good guy can fool­ish­ly stand up in the open while the bad guys are shoot­ing and miss­ing.”

He ques­tioned whether of­fi­cers breached use-of-force stan­dards and whether crit­i­cal foren­sic tests, in­clud­ing gun­shot residue and fin­ger­print analy­sis, had been con­duct­ed on Sealy.

Grif­fith al­so ques­tioned why Sealy was not im­me­di­ate­ly treat­ed as a sus­pect if po­lice be­lieved she had fired at of­fi­cers, not­ing that she was lat­er al­lowed to leave the coun­try for med­ical treat­ment.

He crit­i­cised com­ments at­trib­uted to Gue­var­ro sug­gest­ing the pub­lic did not know what oc­curred be­fore the shoot­ing.

“What took place be­fore the in­ci­dent could not jus­ti­fy the de­ci­sion made to fire a weapon at that spe­cif­ic time,” Grif­fith said.

He added that his com­ments should not be in­ter­pret­ed as an at­tack on the TTPS or a de­c­la­ra­tion of guilt against of­fi­cers in­volved.

“These are ques­tions that must be an­swered,” he said.

Crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali out­lined the le­gal ba­sis for the charges against Sealy.

Ali said the key le­gal ques­tion was whether the ac­tions of Sealy and Sama­roo jus­ti­fied the po­lice use of dead­ly force. He ex­plained that un­der the law, a per­son may be held crim­i­nal­ly re­spon­si­ble if their ac­tions trig­gered a fa­tal po­lice re­sponse.

He added that the mat­ter would like­ly be ex­am­ined fur­ther dur­ing a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing to de­ter­mine whether enough ev­i­dence ex­ists for the case to pro­ceed to tri­al.