“Do not en­gage the po­lice!”

Re­in­forc­ing this warn­ing yes­ter­day as he ad­vised the pub­lic against fac­ing off with of­fi­cers as they ex­e­cute their du­ties, the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) is once again de­fend­ing the ac­tions of law­men.

In re­spond­ing to ques­tions that po­lice-in­volved killings had in­creased since the start of the year, Ju­nior Ben­jamin said the man­date for the po­lice of­fi­cers re­mained clear and con­cise.

“When we are go­ing out there, our aim is to en­sure that we go out and seek to save lives, not take lives,” he said.

In­di­cat­ing that of­fi­cers were du­ty-bound to per­form their job with­out fear or favour, mal­ice or ill-will – the act­ing top cop added, “In the process where a po­lice of­fi­cer might be en­gaged, our of­fi­cers, at this point, there is a ze­ro-tol­er­ance and we will not back down.”

He ap­pealed to cit­i­zens, “Please, do not en­gage the po­lice.”

He said the killings had oc­curred in in­stances where, “Per­sons have en­gaged the po­lice and we recog­nise that these are the sit­u­a­tions that we see these killings.”

In ad­dress­ing such mat­ters, the CoP said they had in­tro­duced a lev­el of trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty to en­sure thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions were done in­to all po­lice shoot­ings.

Ben­jamin said in cas­es where,

He said if "Per­sons are found cul­pa­ble, we will deal with them in ac­cor­dance with our dis­ci­pli­nary and le­gal frame­work.”

Asked if any law or pol­i­cy was pre­vent­ing the au­thor­i­ties from re­leas­ing footage cap­tured by body cam­eras dur­ing po­lice-in­volved killings as was done abroad - Le­gal Of­fi­cer, Cpl Za­heer Ali said the footage need­ed to be se­cured and hand­ed over to of­fi­cials to en­sure a trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion is done and to avoid prej­u­dice lat­er on.

He said due process dic­tat­ed that “Those who are pre­sumed in­no­cent must en­joy that par­tic­u­lar right.”

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, you do not want a sit­u­a­tion where you re­veal footage pre­ma­ture­ly and it has the like­li­hood to prej­u­dice an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion or even re­veal wit­ness­es.”

Ben­jamin said the mat­ter of procur­ing ad­di­tion­al body cam­eras was cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der was aware of the short­fall in the num­bers that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was de­sirous of hav­ing.

They cur­rent­ly have 300 body cam­eras and would like to se­cure ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000.

De­spite this, Ben­jamin said they were hold­ing firm to the edict to all of­fi­cers that, “Once there are body-worn cam­eras, you are to wear them.”

“We want to en­sure that once it is there for them to use, that they use it.”

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty had ex­pressed con­cern in March that po­lice-in­volved killings had more than dou­bled, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.