Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The rel­a­tives of a Cunu­pia man who was killed by po­lice are ques­tion­ing the cir­cum­stances un­der which he was shot, as they claim he act­ed as a care­tak­er for the prop­er­ty and was not armed at the time of his death.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Ab­dul­lah Joseph, 34, was shot and killed by of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion af­ter of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of a “man on premis­es” at an undis­closed ad­dress in Cunu­pia.

The of­fi­cers re­port­ed that af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves, they en­tered the prop­er­ty where they found the man with a gun whom they said “en­gaged them.” The of­fi­cers shot and killed the man.

In the me­dia re­lease, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the in­ci­dent was a warn­ing to crim­i­nals who sought to ter­rorise com­mu­ni­ties.

“If you choose to arm your­selves, in­vade the homes of oth­ers, and con­front law en­force­ment, you will face the full weight of the TTPS. Our of­fi­cers will act de­ci­sive­ly, law­ful­ly and with­out hes­i­ta­tion to pro­tect life, prop­er­ty and the safe­ty of every com­mu­ni­ty across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Gue­var­ro said.

“Home in­va­sions are not crimes of op­por­tu­ni­ty and will be treat­ed as cal­cu­lat­ed acts of vi­o­lence, geared to­wards ter­ror­is­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Pe­tersville, Cunu­pia, and spoke with the rel­a­tives of Joseph, who con­firmed he was the one killed by po­lice.

They, how­ev­er, dis­missed the re­port of the rea­son put for­ward by po­lice, as they claim Joseph slept at the prop­er­ty with the per­mis­sion of the home­own­ers, who lived abroad.

The rel­a­tive, who asked not to be named, al­so ad­mit­ted that while Joseph was ar­rest­ed in the past for the pos­ses­sion of drugs and dealt with drug use in his per­son­al life, he did not be­lieve he was in­volved in a home in­va­sion or was in pos­ses­sion of a gun, as re­port­ed by the po­lice.

“It’s not a home in­va­sion, there are neigh­bours right around there who heard him iden­ti­fy him­self as Ab­dul­lah Joseph and even his fa­ther’s name, he even called the name of the per­son who al­lowed him to sleep there.

“Right now, what they (the po­lice) are talk­ing about... they are try­ing to cov­er them­selves. They could have locked him up and shot him in his foot or take him to court and let the court set­tle it. How they emp­tied all those bul­lets on him, it come like they mur­der him.

“He nev­er have no gun on him, all he does have is his lit­tle drugs. He doesn’t give any­body any trou­ble, if some­body wants some­thing, he will go in the gar­den, pick it and they will give him some food for him to eat.”

The rel­a­tive point­ed to the garage where blood­stains were vis­i­ble on the floor, not­ing that was where Joseph slept.

He said Joseph sup­port­ed him­self by work­ing in a par­cel of agri­cul­tur­al land owned by his broth­er and al­so main­tained the grounds of the prop­er­ty where he was killed for the own­ers.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email yes­ter­day, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) con­firmed they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

Asked if the in­ci­dent strength­ened the case for the PCA’s call for body cam­eras, they not­ed that such de­vices would en­hance law en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“The PCA has con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed mea­sures that en­hance trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and pub­lic con­fi­dence in polic­ing.

“The avail­abil­i­ty of body worn cam­era footage can as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors by pro­vid­ing an ob­jec­tive record of po­lice-cit­i­zen in­ter­ac­tions and may help to clar­i­fy dis­put­ed ac­counts of in­ci­dents.

“The au­thor­i­ty, there­fore, con­tin­ues to view the time­ly im­ple­men­ta­tion of body worn cam­eras as a nec­es­sary ac­count­abil­i­ty mea­sure with­in mod­ern polic­ing.”

The PCA re­port­ed that as of May 20, there have been 20 in­ci­dents of fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings which had led to 18 peo­ple be­ing killed.