Shane Su­perville

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says 3,500 new bul­let­proof vests for of­fi­cers are en route to Trinidad and To­ba­go and are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive by mid-Ju­ly.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, Ben­jamin con­firmed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had pur­chased the body ar­mour last year. He said the de­lay in de­liv­ery was due to ef­forts to se­cure high-qual­i­ty equip­ment with the lat­est man­u­fac­tur­ing dates, to en­sure of­fi­cers ben­e­fit from the longest pos­si­ble shelf life.

“We didn’t want to just buy what was al­ready there,” he ex­plained. “We want­ed to en­sure the of­fi­cers could get the longest pos­si­ble time out of these vests, so we went for those that came hot off the man­u­fac­tur­ing line.”

Ben­jamin added that all pur­chas­es fol­lowed the pro­ce­dures set out in the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, to guar­an­tee trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

His com­ments came in re­sponse to con­cerns raised by PC Shakala Charles, who was wound­ed in the line of du­ty last Ju­ly dur­ing a shootout with gun­men on St Paul Street, east Port of Spain. Charles not­ed that many of­fi­cers had been forced to buy their own vests due to a short­age of stan­dard-is­sue body ar­mour.

Vice Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA), act­ing ASP Ish­mael Pitt, said the new ship­ment was wel­come, but ac­knowl­edged that more was need­ed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Pitt said, “It would have been bet­ter if they were here al­ready. The safe­ty of our of­fi­cers is para­mount be­cause we are ask­ing them to go out dai­ly to con­front crim­i­nal el­e­ments and man­age crime. As a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, we must en­sure they have per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment.”

While he wel­comed the up­date from the Com­mis­sion­er, Pitt said the ex­tend­ed wait was frus­trat­ing. “I must say we are not to­tal­ly pleased it took this length of time, but it is wel­come news that it is on its way.”

Ben­jamin al­so ad­dressed Charles’ frus­tra­tion with the slow pace of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the shoot­ing. He ad­mit­ted he was un­sure of the cur­rent sta­tus of the en­quiry but promised to fol­low up.

“I can un­der­stand if he is dis­ap­point­ed. I think any­one would be if, at this time, those things re­al­ly are at the GEB base,” he said, re­fer­ring to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch. “It’s some­thing we cer­tain­ly have to work on—the pace of our in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Es­pe­cial­ly when there are po­lice shoot­ings or cas­es where of­fi­cers are the vic­tims, we see that same slug­gish, lethar­gic kind of be­hav­iour, and we must con­tin­ue chal­leng­ing our of­fi­cers to do bet­ter.”

He ac­knowl­edged that in many cas­es, in­ves­ti­ga­tions did progress, but vic­tims were not kept up­dat­ed. “A per­son can un­der­stand if the in­ves­ti­ga­tor fell ill or some­thing hap­pened that stalled progress. But a lot of times, it’s not what is done, but how it’s done, and we will work on that—es­pe­cial­ly if we want to build greater pub­lic and in­ter­nal con­fi­dence.”

Re­spond­ing to Charles’ grat­i­tude for his prayers, Ben­jamin said he was glad to of­fer sup­port, adding that his pas­toral back­ground in­forms his lead­er­ship style.

“My mantra has al­ways been that peo­ple don’t care how much you know un­til they know how much you care,” he said. “That was a mo­ment I trea­sured, just be­ing there and know­ing he was alive. I’m a Com­mis­sion­er who prays for and with my of­fi­cers, and I’ll al­ways do my best to let them know we’re in this to­geth­er.”