KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah are sup­port­ing High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad’s call for the pub­lic to con­tin­ue record­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in the line of du­ty.

The calls come at a time when video record­ings of crime and po­lice killings are go­ing vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, spark­ing equal amounts of pub­lic out­rage.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said tech­nol­o­gy such as CCTV, mo­bile phones and body cam­eras are all vi­tal tools for doc­u­ment­ing po­lice in­ter­ac­tions and ul­ti­mate­ly pre­vent­ing abuse of au­thor­i­ty.

Grif­fith said, “All of these things, com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices, can very well be of val­ue, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to any type of per­cep­tion of po­lice abuse of au­thor­i­ty. And this can very well be a stop­gap mea­sure in the ab­sence of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice bla­tant­ly re­fus­ing to ad­here to a manda­to­ry stand­ing or­der that I im­ple­ment­ed four years ago, mak­ing it manda­to­ry that any po­lice of­fi­cer who is on pa­trol, op­er­a­tion, road­block, is­su­ing a war­rant, they must sign for a body cam­era be­cause there are 1,200 body cam­eras and you do not have 1,200 of­fi­cers on op­er­a­tional du­ty at any one time. So, be­cause of the de­lib­er­ate re­fusal of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to en­force that stand­ing or­der, this can very well be an av­enue.”

How­ev­er, he does not sup­port the idea of every cit­i­zen record­ing every sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer.

He added, “What I would not want is for us to reach a point where every cit­i­zen be­lieves that when they are con­front­ed by a po­lice of­fi­cer, they must im­me­di­ate­ly start record­ing the po­lice of­fi­cer. That ob­vi­ous­ly can be very frus­trat­ing. I think this should on­ly be done if it reach­es a point where they be­lieve that the po­lice of­fi­cer is abus­ing his or her au­thor­i­ty. The po­lice of­fi­cer is reach­ing a point where he will try to tar­get the in­di­vid­ual. And again, the un­for­tu­nate thing, there are many sit­u­a­tions where this would have been done and po­lice of­fi­cers will snatch the phone from the cit­i­zens’” he said.

“So there’s al­so that as­pect that might take place. It all goes to the de­mand that we need to have amend­ments in our laws. We have colo­nial laws from the 1920s of dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour ... These laws have to be changed. These were laws that would have been in the 1920s to con­trol the mass­es. And some­times a rogue po­lice of­fi­cer or an ig­no­rant po­lice of­fi­cer might not un­der­stand that be­cause you have this law, it doesn’t mean you have to abuse it and en­force it. Be­cause all that this con­tin­ues to do is to erode pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the po­lice, which is some­thing we do not want.”

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, Heer­ah praised Seep­er­sad’s rec­om­men­da­tion, say­ing he al­so hopes to see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of manda­to­ry body cam­eras not on­ly for po­lice of­fi­cers but mem­bers of the De­fence Force and prison ser­vice.

Be­yond that, Heer­ah called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a na­tion­al in­ter-agency com­plaints au­thor­i­ty as an added ac­count­abil­i­ty mea­sure.

“The body cams are not on­ly to cap­ture in­ci­dents or sce­nar­ios or crime scenes. It is al­so an el­e­ment of pro­tec­tion, both for the of­fi­cer and for the cit­i­zen that you’re en­gag­ing with. It’s al­so part of the du­ty of care. But where he (Seep­er­sad) went fur­ther to in­di­cate the use of the CCTVs and cell phones, one will then have to ex­plore if it’s go­ing to be per­mis­si­ble in court ... And then again, when such in­for­ma­tion, such ev­i­dence, such crime scenes and sit­u­a­tions are cap­tured, who is go­ing to in­ves­ti­gate? Who are we go­ing to call now to car­ry out the in­ves­ti­ga­tions if some­thing is not be­ing done as it’s sup­posed to be, ac­cord­ing to the rule of law?” he said.