With a sharp in­crease in fa­tal shoot­ings in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son agrees with Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der that the safe­ty of of­fi­cers is para­mount.

Checks with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) yes­ter­day re­vealed 27 fa­tal po­lice in­ci­dents for the year so far, re­sult­ing in 35 vic­tims. In con­trast, by May 25 last year, there were 15 such in­ci­dents with 23 vic­tims. This marks an 80 per cent rise in in­ci­dents and a 52.17 per cent in­crease in vic­tims.

Alexan­der told re­porters in Princes Town yes­ter­day, “For them to pro­tect you, we must first pro­tect them.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dick­son said that while of­fi­cers are trained to pro­tect and serve, they are equal­ly trained in the use of dead­ly force and must be sup­port­ed when they act with­in le­gal bound­aries.

“What we will en­cour­age our of­fi­cers to do is to op­er­ate with­in the con­fines of the law. We have a use-of-force pol­i­cy. Once our of­fi­cers op­er­ate with­in the use-of-force pol­i­cy, we, the as­so­ci­a­tion, will sup­port the of­fi­cers,” Dick­son said.

Dick­son said the as­so­ci­a­tion was con­cerned about the fre­quen­cy of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings, not­ing that this trend is a symp­tom of wider so­ci­etal break­downs, in­clud­ing the pro­lif­er­a­tion of high-pow­ered weapons, erod­ing re­spect for law and or­der, and ris­ing in­dis­ci­pline among the crim­i­nal­ly in­clined.

He added that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has strug­gled to ad­e­quate­ly re­ha­bil­i­tate con­victs or is­sue sen­tences harsh enough to act as a de­ter­rent.

Against this back­drop, Dick­son is ad­vo­cat­ing for wider de­ploy­ment of non-lethal op­tions such as tasers and pep­per spray, say­ing they are cur­rent­ly re­strict­ed to cer­tain po­lice units. He said the au­thor­i­ties may need to look at sup­ply­ing all of­fi­cers with these de­vices, along with the re­quired train­ing.

But he be­lieves the threats fac­ing of­fi­cers are es­ca­lat­ing. De­scrib­ing the mod­ern crime scene, Dick­son said, “We are no longer find­ing crime scenes with knives and cut­lass­es. Crime scenes are 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion, 7.62, .45 am­mu­ni­tion, 9 mm. Not even .38 am­mu­ni­tion. So, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant evo­lu­tion in how crimes are be­ing per­pe­trat­ed.”

Giv­en the in­crease in heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nals, Dick­son said more shootouts with po­lice are a log­i­cal out­come. He be­lieves this new crim­i­nal cul­ture em­bold­ens gun­men and in­stils fear in com­mu­ni­ties, adding that po­lice must be ready to re­spond with force when con­front­ed.

He warned that hes­i­ta­tion dur­ing armed en­gage­ments could prove fa­tal for of­fi­cers, who do not ini­ti­ate dead­ly force but re­spond to the threats posed to them. Cit­ing a 2024 in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Con­sta­ble Shakala Charles of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, Dick­son said Charles was shot while re­spond­ing to a shoot­ing on St Paul Street, Port-of-Spain.

“By mere mil­lime­tres, the pierc­ing of the round missed his heart. He had to un­der­go emer­gency surgery. These things are re­al. These things are hap­pen­ing in com­mu­ni­ties, and the re­sponse by the po­lice has to be able to weed those things out,” he said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to meet with Alexan­der to­day to dis­cuss en­hanced pro­tec­tions for of­fi­cers.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter probes uptick in shoot­ings

Min­is­ter of Jus­tice De­vesh Ma­haraj, mean­while, said the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing a se­ri­ous look at the rise in po­lice-in­volved killings for this year so far, and his min­istry has re­quest­ed a re­port from the PCA to get a sta­tus up­date on on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to these in­ci­dents.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Ma­haraj said the Min­istry of Jus­tice was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that jus­tice, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and hu­man rights re­main cen­tral to law en­force­ment prac­tices in T&T.

He ex­plained that while the PCA is not a pros­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ty, it plays a crit­i­cal role in the coun­try’s civil­ian over­sight in­fra­struc­ture.

“The Min­istry of Jus­tice is the line min­istry for the PCA, and whilst the PCA is not a pros­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ty, its in­ves­tiga­tive man­date is a vi­tal com­po­nent of civil­ian over­sight. Where ev­i­dence of crim­i­nal con­duct is found, the PCA refers mat­ters to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), or to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.” 

Ma­haraj said the min­istry sup­ports the con­tin­ued strength­en­ing of the PCA to en­sure it is well-re­sourced, in­de­pen­dent, and ef­fec­tive. He said in this re­gard, dis­cus­sions will be held short­ly with the PCA’s lead­er­ship.

Turn­ing to the emo­tion­al toll of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings, the min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged the trau­ma ex­pe­ri­enced by fam­i­lies who have lost loved ones in po­lice-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents.

“The Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was formed to bridge the ser­vice gap for vic­tims and wit­ness­es of crime,” Ma­haraj said. “Whilst this is a mat­ter for the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, I have had dis­cus­sions with the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to ex­plore ways to ex­pand and strength­en this unit.”

He al­so point­ed to ex­ist­ing com­pen­sa­tion mech­a­nisms un­der the law for fam­i­lies who can es­tab­lish un­law­ful killings by law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

“Fur­ther, the Crim­i­nal In­juries Com­pen­sa­tion Act, No 21 of 1999, was es­tab­lished to pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion to per­sons or de­pen­dents of per­sons who suf­fered in­jury as a di­rect re­sult of a crime of vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to mur­der, manslaugh­ter, and shoot­ing with in­tent,” he said.

“In in­stances of the un­law­ful killing of cit­i­zens by a po­lice of­fi­cer, the fam­i­lies of those vic­tims can find sup­port through the (Crim­i­nal In­juries Com­pen­sa­tion) Board, which is man­dat­ed to eval­u­ate and de­ter­mine awards for com­pen­sa­tion for the de­pen­dents of such vic­tims.”

Apart from the PCA, Ma­haraj not­ed that two ad­di­tion­al units with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice are man­dat­ed to han­dle com­plaints against of­fi­cers: the Po­lice Com­plaints Di­vi­sion and the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau. These, he said, pro­vide fur­ther av­enues for ac­count­abil­i­ty.

(See Page 6)