Joel Julien

Kei­th Scot­land, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South, where sep­a­rate in­ci­dents of protest ac­tion took place to­day says while he em­pathis­es with the ag­griev­ed con­stituents, he can­not con­done law-break­ing.

Scot­land made the com­ments dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Ltd fol­low­ing fiery protests along Nel­son Street in Port-of-Spain, Sea Lots, and Beetham Gar­dens.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in­ci­dent re­sult­ed in the death of Fabi­an Richards, Niko Williams and Isa­iah Roberts.

The de­ceased are from Snake Val­ley, Laven­tille, Trou Macacque, Beetham Gar­dens.

"We al­ways un­der­stand that these things hap­pen and emo­tions run high but there is no way we can con­done the break­ing of the law and that is not on the cards. I cer­tain­ly will be vis­it­ing them short­ly to hear first-hand what their plight is and to com­mu­ni­cate with them to see if there could be a more palat­able way of deal­ing with this be­cause it just can't be con­doned," Scot­land stat­ed.

Scot­land ad­vised the fam­i­ly of the de­ceased to con­tact the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty or the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent.

Scot­land said he will be vis­it­ing the area to speak to the res­i­dents.
"There is no code of si­lence here. We are try­ing to ad­dress is­sues as they arise and we are not bury­ing our heads in the sand," he said.

Scot­land said he is open to as­sist­ing any of the ag­griev­ed con­stituents pur­sue le­git­i­mate av­enues for re­dress.