Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, has not­ed the in­crease in the num­ber of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings and has as­sured that every one of them will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the TTPS and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) to de­ter­mine if the min­i­mum use of force was used.

It comes af­ter two sep­a­rate po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in­ci­dents on Wednes­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith dur­ing the last two years, there were 131 in­ci­dents where po­lice of­fi­cers were shot at. He said it is equiv­a­lent to one po­lice of­fi­cer be­ing shot every six days.

He said the in­ci­dents on Wednes­day and oth­er be­fore show the dan­ger the po­lice face in the line of du­ty.

“It is ob­vi­ous that when these per­sons shoot at the po­lice, we will re­turn fire. And be­cause we are more high­ly trained, there is al­ways the like­li­hood that some of these per­sons will be killed. If there is an in­crease in shoot­ings at the po­lice, it is very pos­si­ble that more per­sons will be shot.”

The com­mis­sion­er said he is grate­ful that an of­fi­cer has not been killed in a while.

The TTPS said on Wednes­day, mem­bers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit, act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at a two-storey build­ing lo­cat­ed on John Street, Ch­agua­nas.

Dur­ing the search, the po­lice of­fi­cers were con­front­ed by two men who opened fire on them.

The of­fi­cers re­turned fire, fa­tal­ly wound­ing the two men. One of the po­lice of­fi­cers was shot in his chest. Two firearms, be­long­ing to the dead men, were re­cov­ered.

One of the dead men was iden­ti­fied as Joel Ram­sun­dar, an ac­tive mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pris­ons Ser­vice, and Ale­an­dro Gomez, a na­tion­al of Venezuela. Ram­sun­dar was last post­ed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison.

Ear­li­er Wednes­day, of­fi­cers went to Gas­par­il­lo Road, San­ta Cruz, to ex­e­cute a war­rant on a man for pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion.

They were fired up­on and re­turned fire.

The want­ed man, Shaquille Mor­ris, was shot and lat­er suc­cumbed to his in­juries.