Joel Julien

The man seen in a video post­ed on so­cial me­dia be­ing ar­rest­ed while hold­ing a child in his arms is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

The man has so far con­tact­ed an at­tor­ney and a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter is ex­pect­ed to be served on the TTPS ear­ly next week.

He has, there­fore, de­clined to speak to the me­dia pend­ing the le­gal ac­tion.

The man, from Gon­za­les, Bel­mont has, how­ev­er, been charged with dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour, re­sist­ing ar­rest and ob­scene lan­guage.

At­tor­neys have asked him to get a med­ical re­port to aid in their le­gal ac­tion.

The child he was hold­ing at the time of his ar­rest was said to be feel­ing fine yes­ter­day, af­ter al­leged­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some swelling near his neck, which is be­lieved to have been caused by a pass­ing blow suf­fered dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

Guardian Me­dia has so far reached out to the TTPS to get some clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the in­ci­dent but no of­fi­cial re­sponse has been giv­en as yet.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Christo­pher, how­ev­er, is sched­uled to at­tend to­day’s po­lice me­dia brief­ing, at which time she may field ques­tions on the in­ci­dent.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) is al­so con­tin­u­ing its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent, which is said to have oc­curred near the St Au­gus­tine Road and Gloster Link Road in Gon­za­les on Tues­day.

The in­ci­dent was caught on cam­era and shared on so­cial me­dia.

While the au­dio is not clear and does al­low the lis­ten­er to un­der­stand what trig­gered the in­ci­dent, a male of­fi­cer is seen tak­ing the child from one of two men who were stopped by po­lice and lat­er hand­ing the child to a uni­formed fe­male of­fi­cer.

This, even as sev­er­al oth­er uni­formed of­fi­cers phys­i­cal­ly de­tained the man and an­oth­er.

Sec­onds lat­er, one of­fi­cer is seen lead­ing the man, now hand­cuffed, to­wards a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle, where he slams his head in­to the back wind­screen, be­fore open­ing the back and shov­ing him in­side and slam­ming the lid.

PCA di­rec­tor David West has con­firmed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched in­to the in­ci­dent.

The in­ci­dent is said to have es­ca­lat­ed be­cause the ba­by’s fa­ther was in an­oth­er ve­hi­cle and had al­leged­ly been beat­en by of­fi­cers. He was hos­pi­talised as a re­sult of the in­ci­dent and sub­se­quent­ly dis­charged.

Af­ter see­ing the video of the in­ci­dent, pres­i­dent of the Fa­thers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Rhon­dall Fee­les said he was ap­palled by the ac­tions of the po­lice.

“I am to­tal­ly ap­palled to see that type of be­hav­iour dis­played by the po­lice of­fi­cer be­cause I can at­test per­son­al­ly work­ing along­side the TTPS with a num­ber of oth­er of­fi­cers that are ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to bridge that gap and try­ing to build com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions and I think this is a big blow. This is a big blow,” Fee­les said.

Fee­les said the child could have been se­vere­ly in­jured be­cause of the of­fi­cer’s ac­tions.