Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Even with the pro­posed in­clu­sion of a manda­to­ry body-cam­era pol­i­cy for po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers as part of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, res­i­dents of Diego Mar­tin say they re­main wary of the strat­e­gy, cit­ing past in­ci­dents of “ag­gres­sive” and “heavy-hand­ed” po­lice tac­tics dur­ing crime-fight­ing op­er­a­tions.

Clause 21 of the bill states that “po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the De­fence Force, as far as pos­si­ble hav­ing re­gard to avail­able re­sources, [are] to use body-worn cam­eras dur­ing spe­cial op­er­a­tions in closed ar­eas.”

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Rich Plain Road, Diego Mar­tin, yes­ter­day, some res­i­dents said they were not re­as­sured by the pro­vi­sion, not­ing that any large-scale de­ploy­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers made them un­easy.

One res­i­dent, who op­er­ates a mi­ni-mart and asked not to be named, re­ferred to the shoot­ing death of PC Clarence Gilkes, who was killed dur­ing a pur­port­ed shootout be­tween mem­bers of his West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force team and gun­men in 2022.

Con­trary to the of­fi­cial po­lice re­port, an au­top­sy found that Gilkes was shot from be­hind, with a TTPS-is­sued bul­let re­cov­ered from his body.

Two po­lice of­fi­cers, PC Kris­t­ian Gen­ty and WPC Crys­tal Williams-Bow­man, were sub­se­quent­ly charged with his mur­der.

The res­i­dent said po­lice de­scend­ed on the com­mu­ni­ty in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of Gilkes’ death, con­duct­ing house search­es and de­ten­tions, which he de­scribed as “ex­ces­sive.”

“They make a whole big scene with the Com­mis­sion­er (of Po­lice) come up here with his en­tourage... up to now they ain’t come back and apol­o­gise even though ev­i­dence come out to con­tra­dict them.

“Maybe be­cause of those in­ci­dents we get stereo­type and put un­der that la­bel. West End Po­lice Sta­tion is two streets away, we al­ready have a heavy po­lice pres­ence, what go­ing and change, be­sides po­lice be­ing more harsh to peo­ple?”

An­oth­er res­i­dent hoped the TTPS would not use tac­ti­cal of­fi­cers whom he felt were more ag­gres­sive and prone to con­fronta­tion when in­ter­act­ing with the pub­lic.

“If they want to do that... they have to train a cer­tain set of of­fi­cers to deal with the pub­lic. You can’t put Task Force men to come here and route every­day be­cause they have a cer­tain kind of tem­per and as they say they will be liv­ing with them ba­si­cal­ly.

“You can’t put a man who trained to kill or look­ing for an ex­cuse to fire a shot to come and rea­son with civil­ians.”

Re­fer­ring to com­ments about the preva­lence of gangs in west­ern Trinidad, one man who de­scribed him­self as a “life-long” Rich Plain res­i­dent said while the neigh­bour­hood had faced dif­fi­cul­ties with vi­o­lent crime in the re­cent past, the com­mu­ni­ty was now more peace­ful, with res­i­dents more will­ing to re­solve dis­putes non-vi­o­lent­ly.

“I don’t think the po­lice by them­selves can take cred­it for that. Three four years ago there was war with this one and that one in Rich Plain, but we all just had enough of bury­ing peo­ple and go­ing to fu­ner­als.

“We all came to­geth­er and re­alise that we have to live to­geth­er.”

He added that any gangs op­er­at­ing in the neigh­bour­hood were in the mi­nor­i­ty com­pared with law-abid­ing res­i­dents.

“It have no Sixx and no Sev­en or Nine down here you know? We don’t have that kind of thing and even if they are around, they are much small­er than peo­ple who go about their life with­out trou­ble and bachan­nal.”

In La Puer­ta, a woman in her 60s said while she was aware of the rep­u­ta­tion some parts of her neigh­bour­hood had, she had nev­er had any prob­lems with crime or gangs, point­ing to her fruit stall.

De­spite this, she said she was not op­posed to the in­tro­duc­tion of spe­cial op­er­a­tions in the neigh­bour­hood, pro­vid­ed po­lice of­fi­cers act­ed fair­ly, as she claimed to have wit­nessed in­stances of po­lice mis­con­duct.

“I can’t say the gov­ern­ment wrong for hav­ing that kind of plan for crime. We all know crime is a big prob­lem and if they have in­for­ma­tion on how bad it could get, well then they should do what they have to do.

“All I have to ask is that the po­lice act prop­er­ly and do their jobs the right way with­out rough­ing up in­no­cent peo­ple and pulling them out their house, which is some­thing we all had to deal with around here.”

In Diego Mar­tin yes­ter­day, sev­er­al po­lice pa­trols were ob­served in Rich Plain, La Puer­ta and Bagatelle.

At the Co­corite Fish­ing De­pot, off the Fore­shore, pres­i­dent of the Co­corite Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion An­tho­ny Jack­son said he was not op­posed to the in­tro­duc­tion of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, not­ing that he and oth­er fish­er­folk gen­er­al­ly main­tained a good rap­port with po­lice of­fi­cers.

He said the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions ini­tia­tive was “worth a try”, but felt that a large-scale de­ploy­ment of po­lice should be con­duct­ed re­spon­si­bly and with clear ob­jec­tives to avoid abuse.

Re­fer­ring to con­cerns over the en­try of drugs through le­gal and il­le­gal ports of en­try, Jack­son said that while this was a chal­lenge, he did not en­cour­age il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties and took a firm stance against peo­ple with such mo­tives.

“I make it my busi­ness to let them (fish­er­folk) know, ‘Alyuh could come and dock here, but if I see any drugs and guns I go­ing straight to d po­lice, be­cause if I en­cour­age that I will be mak­ing things worse for my le­git­i­mate fish­er­men here and all they try­ing to do is sup­port them­selves the le­gal way... the right way.’”

Jack­son said while vi­o­lent crime was not a ma­jor con­cern for fish­er­men at the land­ing site, the theft of boat en­gines was a fre­quent prob­lem, as it led to the loss of liveli­hoods for fish­er­folk.