An­na-Lisa Paul

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an in­ci­dent in Bel­mont in which a child was in­jured and two men were ar­rest­ed and charged on Tues­day.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred near the St Au­gus­tine Road and Gloster Link Road, Bel­mont.

Two of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Task Force were on mo­bile pa­trol when they stopped the car the men were trav­el­ling in.

It is al­leged that the in­ci­dent es­ca­lat­ed be­tween law­men and the sus­pects, fol­low­ing which the dri­ver and the pas­sen­ger were ar­rest­ed.

A video post­ed to so­cial me­dia showed a group of of­fi­cers in­ter­ven­ing in a sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing the two men—one of whom was hold­ing the ba­by.

The in­ci­dent is said to have es­ca­lat­ed be­cause the ba­by’s fa­ther was in an­oth­er ve­hi­cle and had al­leged­ly been beat­en by of­fi­cers. He was hos­pi­talised as a re­sult of the in­ci­dent and sub­se­quent­ly dis­charged.

While the au­dio is not clear and does al­low the lis­ten­er to un­der­stand what trig­gered the in­ci­dent —a male of­fi­cer is seen tak­ing the child from one of the men and lat­er hand­ing the child to a uni­formed fe­male of­fi­cer.

This, even as sev­er­al oth­er uni­formed of­fi­cers phys­i­cal­ly de­tained the two.

Sec­onds lat­er, one of­fi­cer is seen lead­ing one of the men to­wards a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle, where he slams the sus­pect’s head in­to the back wind­screen be­fore open­ing the back and shov­ing him in­side and slam­ming the lid.

PCA di­rec­tor David West con­firmed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched in­to the in­ci­dent. He did not share any fur­ther de­tails re­lat­ing to the mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia learnt from oth­er per­sons in­volved in the mat­ter that fol­low­ing a med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion, the child was said to be fine, ex­cept for some swelling near the neck.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said dig­i­tal and oth­er ev­i­dence has al­ready been ob­tained by agen­cies in­volved.

The two men were lat­er charged with dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour, re­sist­ing ar­rest and ob­scene lan­guage.

Pres­i­dent of the Fa­thers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Rhon­dall Fee­les said he was ap­palled when he saw the video.

“I am to­tal­ly ap­palled to see that type of be­hav­iour dis­played by the po­lice of­fi­cer be­cause I can at­test per­son­al­ly work­ing along­side the TTPS with a num­ber of oth­er of­fi­cers that are ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to bridge that gap and try­ing to build com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions and I think this is a big blow. This is a big blow,” Fee­les said.

Fee­les said the child could have been se­vere­ly in­jured be­cause of the of­fi­cer’s ac­tions.

“Then we have to look at the things that could have hap­pened, there is a child in the gen­tle­man’s hands, what if you struck him and the child fell out of the man’s hands hit his head and died what would have been your sce­nario as an of­fi­cer,” Fee­les said.

He called for more “emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence” from of­fi­cers.

“I am not say­ing that polic­ing is an easy thing to do at cer­tain times but it comes with the ter­ri­to­ry that you have to have a greater lev­el of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence be­cause it is go­ing to be hard out there,” Fee­les said.

Fee­les said he felt the sit­u­a­tion was “pushed over­board.”

“At the end re­sult he was still ar­rest­ed so if it was some­thing that de­mand­ed his ar­rest you could have gone tak­en the child out of his hands and ar­rest­ed him be­cause at the end of the day you still ar­rest­ed him,” Fee­les said.

“There was no need for the ap­par­ent bat­ter and the so-called de­mean­ing and dis­ci­plin­ing of the gen­tle­man in that kind of man­ner,” he said.

Fee­les said the thing that stood out to him most was that the sus­pect did not re­spond vi­o­lent­ly.

“He ex­er­cised more emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence than the of­fi­cers who struck him be­cause he with­held that vi­o­lent re­sponse or the fight up that we nor­mal­ly see in oth­er ar­eas and I think that is what dis­ap­point­ed me most. This is what we ask the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to do, this is what we ask mem­bers of the pub­lic to do; don’t re­sist,” Fee­les said.

“So, it leads me to an­oth­er ques­tion as well where does it start and who is re­spond­ing to who? Is it that the TTPS is re­spond­ing in this man­ner due to the ap­par­ent past or his­tor­i­cal hos­til­i­ty of cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties or is it vice ver­sa? Or does the hos­tile be­hav­iour that we see be­ing dis­played in these com­mu­ni­ties, the com­mu­ni­ty’s re­ac­tion to the hos­tile be­hav­iour that they have en­dured by the po­lice his­tor­i­cal­ly and there­in lies the ma­jor and mas­sive ques­tion and what­ev­er the an­swer is there needs to be some time of me­di­a­tion be­tween the TTPS and the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­bers of the pub­lic that have this type of ex­pe­ri­ence,” he said.