DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, is urg­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to en­sure of­fi­cers re­ceive prop­er train­ing in vic­tim sup­port. He is al­so call­ing for the cre­ation of a civil­ian com­mit­tee to over­see Firearm Users Li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tions.

Ram­lo­gan’s ap­peal to the top cop—who did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s at­tempts to reach him—came af­ter an emo­tion­al tes­ti­mo­ny from kid­nap­ping sur­vivor Clint Ar­joon, who shared his ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing a con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed stand-your-ground law, host­ed by MP Dave Tan­coo at his Fyz­abad con­stituen­cy of­fice on Fri­day night. Ram­lo­gan al­so re­spond­ed to con­cerns about po­ten­tial racial bias in the pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

Still vis­i­bly trau­ma­tised, Ar­joon re­mem­bered the ex­act minute of his ab­duc­tion: “At 6:45 pm on No­vem­ber 2, 2002. I was kid­napped just down the hill there.”

He al­so told the gath­er­ing he had failed by the very jus­tice sys­tem meant to pro­tect him.

Ac­cord­ing to Ar­joon, ten years af­ter the in­ci­dent, when the case was fi­nal­ly called, he was in­formed that au­thor­i­ties had lost his file. He said he was then in­ter­ro­gat­ed at the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, which led him to aban­don the case al­to­geth­er. His ac­count prompt­ed Ram­lo­gan to de­mand struc­tur­al changes with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“There needs to be a cul­tur­al shift in at­ti­tude in terms of the po­lice to­wards vic­tims of crime. There must be,” he said.

“So, with a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in place, I have no doubt that that sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing is re­quired and with now the greater use of tech­nol­o­gy in place, I think we will make some head­way with those things.”

Ram­lo­gan fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed re­mov­ing po­lice of­fi­cers from the FUL vet­ting process, in­stead sug­gest­ing a qual­i­fied civil­ian pan­el.

“Us­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to do non-po­lice work like that is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Put a lawyer, a crim­i­nol­o­gist, and put an MBA grad­u­ate (in busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion) and put a team in place and let them have a ded­i­cat­ed fo­cus—clear the back­log with­in six months.”

He al­so dis­missed racial bias con­cerns sur­round­ing the pro­posed stand-your-ground law as un­found­ed.

“Who in their right mind, trem­bling with fear in their own home, is go­ing to stop to think about bloody race?” He asked.

“What you’re think­ing about is your life, your daugh­ter, your wife. The crit­i­cisms have ab­solute­ly no ba­sis legal­ly, so­cial­ly or po­lit­i­cal­ly.”

PNM mum on stand-your-ground con­tri­bu­tions

Ef­forts by Guardian Me­dia to reach PNM of­fi­cials—in­clud­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, PNM Chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les, and PRO Faris Al-Rawi—were un­suc­cess­ful up to late yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle voiced strong crit­i­cism of the UNC-led con­sul­ta­tions on Face­book, lament­ing that no draft leg­is­la­tion or pol­i­cy frame­work was shared with gov­ern­ment MPs for con­stituen­cy-lev­el feed­back.

“Pro­tect­ing and se­cur­ing our cit­i­zens and homes are na­tion­al is­sues, not UNC is­sues,” Mar­celle wrote. “Laven­tille West con­stituents are cit­i­zens too.”

Mar­celle called for the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and rel­e­vant min­istries to lead non-par­ti­san, ex­pert-dri­ven con­sul­ta­tions in­stead of what he de­scribed as po­lit­i­cal­ly-mo­ti­vat­ed ini­tia­tives.

Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion rais­es alarm over ex­clu­sion from pro­posed law

Mean­while, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTB­WA) has raised alarm about how the pro­posed law may af­fect blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired cit­i­zens.

The group raised con­cerns about blind peo­ple be­ing un­able to ac­cess firearms for self-de­fence, misiden­ti­fy­ing in­trud­ers, and be­ing left out of pol­i­cy plan­ning.

“The risk of trag­ic misiden­ti­fi­ca­tion is re­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly if of­fi­cers do not prop­er­ly an­nounce their pres­ence or if the in­di­vid­ual has no ac­ces­si­ble means of ver­i­fy­ing iden­ti­ty,” the as­so­ci­a­tion stat­ed.

“This le­gal grey area can put blind cit­i­zens at in­creased risk of harm or crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty for at­tempt­ing to pro­tect them­selves in con­fu­sion or fear.”

The TTB­WA ar­gued that most blind peo­ple live on fixed or min­i­mal in­comes and should not be bur­dened with cost­ly pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures now im­plic­it­ly re­quired by the pro­posed law.

“They should not be bur­dened with the cost of pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems, re­in­forced doors, or oth­er cost­ly mea­sures that may now be deemed nec­es­sary un­der a law that as­sumes all cit­i­zens are equal­ly equipped to de­fend them­selves.”

The group is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to:

* Clar­i­fy how the law will ac­com­mo­date and pro­tect blind cit­i­zens;

* Pro­vide sub­sidised or state-fund­ed safe­ty tools such as voice-ac­ti­vat­ed alarms and emer­gency alert de­vices;

* De­vel­op po­lice train­ing for en­gag­ing with blind peo­ple in high-stress sit­u­a­tions;

* Al­low case-by-case firearm ap­pli­ca­tion eval­u­a­tions for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties;

* And en­shrine ex­plic­it le­gal pro­tec­tions for those un­able to meet phys­i­cal or vi­su­al de­fence ex­pec­ta­tions.