I just knew that the video of the po­lice shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealey would turn the ta­bles.

It didn’t mat­ter who Sama­roo and Sealey were. It didn’t mat­ter what they did be­fore they were shot. What mat­ters is that what was hap­pen­ing in the video did not seem right. What mat­ters is that the po­lice did not look good. What mat­ters is that it vi­su­al­ly con­tra­dict­ed what cit­i­zens would have read or heard based on me­dia re­ports be­fore—a car chase, ex­change of gun­fire, po­lice self-de­fence.

The de­ci­sion by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice not to sus­pend the of­fi­cers iden­ti­fi­able in the video, who shot at a man who put his hands out­side his dri­ver’s win­dow from a car that could not move, could pos­si­bly be re­gard­ed as an ex­pres­sion of sol­i­dar­i­ty with his men. Be­cause he may have been think­ing that if his of­fi­cers felt they are risk­ing sus­pen­sion each time they shoot at some­one known to or want­ed by them, they might lose their en­thu­si­asm to go ag­gres­sive­ly af­ter crim­i­nals. So one can at least ap­pre­ci­ate the dilem­ma of the CoP.

What took peo­ple by sur­prise, though, was the stri­den­cy of the CoP’s re­sponse even af­ter he, and large num­bers of cit­i­zens, saw the video on the 7 o’clock news. Such un­equiv­o­cal re­solve seemed to warn that the CoP would stand with the po­lice against the cit­i­zen and that jus­tice could be com­pro­mised un­der his watch. Very bad sig­nals in a po­lice ser­vice that has cor­rupt el­e­ments, rogues, vagabonds and oth­ers com­plic­it with gang­sters and fa­cil­i­ta­tive of the drug in­dus­try; even if we con­cede read­i­ly that the vast ma­jor­i­ty in the Po­lice Ser­vice strive to do their job well and to be re­spect­ed as law en­force­ment pro­fes­sion­als.

Many felt when he as­sumed of­fice that Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro was bold, clear, ar­tic­u­late and strong. Many felt he was need­ed in a sit­u­a­tion where gang­land pow­er was in­creas­ing and mur­ders es­ca­lat­ing. And his re­duc­tion of mur­ders by 42 per cent was enough to prompt a US Em­bassy of­fi­cial to ad­vise the au­thor­i­ties, op­ti­misti­cal­ly, to pro­mote T&T as a low crime des­ti­na­tion to tourists. To deal with gangs and a run­away crim­i­nal sit­u­a­tion, one has to be tough. But peo­ple al­so as­sumed the com­mis­sion­er was no-non­sense but fair. So, his stri­dent, in­flex­i­ble re­sponse gave many a jolt.

The Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty com­pound­ed mat­ters by speak­ing about re­strain­ing so­cial me­dia posts in a man­ner which sug­gest­ed that the po­lice pro­mo­tion­al line: “If you see some­thing, say some­thing,” was on­ly talk. Was the min­is­ter say­ing that po­lice be­hav­iour should be ex­empt from cit­i­zen scruti­ny? To any lev­el-head­ed cit­i­zen, this would be cause for dis­so­nance and cre­ate the con­di­tions for push­back.

The call for body cam­eras for ac­tive po­lice has now be­come stronger. Why are po­lice re­sist­ing body cam­eras any­how? What is it ex­act­ly about cam­eras that is a prob­lem?

The lev­el of mis­trust of the po­lice is re­flect­ed in the re­cent de­ci­sion by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, a no-non­sense judge who is not afraid to give his point of view on so­ci­ety, stand in the way of gov­ern­ment ex­cess, nor show un­der­stand­ing and com­pas­sion in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. In a re­cent rul­ing, he re­ject­ed as lies a po­lice­man’s sto­ry in a sim­ple traf­fic case in favour of the cit­i­zen. At the same time, he called for deep­er po­lice scruti­ny by cit­i­zens with their own video record­ing de­vices. This call was sup­port­ed by for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who would know a thing or two about the po­lice ser­vice, and Garvin Heera, who once head­ed the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre and re­cent­ly com­plet­ed his PhD in Se­cu­ri­ty stud­ies.

But there is push­back with mer­it and mo­tive. The Po­lice Ser­vice has in­creased its vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by vis­i­ble ac­tion that dis­turbs and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty lead­er­ship has made un­forced er­rors of judge­ment. Al­most in­evitably, there is a call for the sus­pen­sion of the of­fi­cers in­volved in Joshua Sama­roo’s killing; a call, al­so, for the res­ig­na­tion of the po­lice com­mis­sion­er; and for bet­ter qual­i­ty of ac­com­mo­da­tion and con­di­tions of high-pro­file de­tainees at Tetron.

Gue­var­ro, hav­ing al­ready been so un­com­pro­mis­ing on the mat­ter of sus­pen­sion, may find it dif­fi­cult to re­verse his po­si­tion now. But do­ing so may ac­tu­al­ly sal­vage his cred­i­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, on no ac­count should he re­sign. The call it­self is way too ex­ces­sive and sub­ver­sive in the cir­cum­stances.

And I have been to the Roy­al Gaol on Fred­er­ick Street and to Gold­en Grove in Arou­ca to see pris­on­ers and oth­ers. Prison could nev­er be nice, even if you de­serve to be there. Treat­ing pris­on­ers at Teteron bet­ter will en­hance the per­cep­tion of jus­tice at work.