Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Two po­lice of­fi­cers were charged yes­ter­day morn­ing in the shoot­ing death of their col­league PC Clarence Gilkes ear­li­er this year.

PC Kris­t­ian Gen­ty, 28, was charged with the mur­der of PC Gilkes, as well as with shoot­ing with in­tent to do griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, while 30-year-old WPC Crys­tal Williams-Bow­man was charged with shoot­ing with in­tent to do griev­ous bod­i­ly harm. The two were last at­tached to the West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force.

WPC Williams-Bow­man was grant­ed bail with a sure­ty in the sum of $500,000 at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion. Both are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates Court to­mor­row.

“On Fri­day 22 April, 2022, while at Up­per Rich Plain Road, Diego Mar­tin, PC Gilkes, PC Gen­ty and WPC Williams-Bow­man, who were all on du­ty and armed with TTPS is­sued firearms, al­leged­ly ap­proached a man and fired sev­er­al shots at him. In so do­ing, PC Gen­ty whilst fir­ing shots at the man, al­leged­ly shot PC Gilkes, who was con­veyed to the St James Med­ical Health Fa­cil­i­ty where he suc­cumbed to his in­juries,” a TTPS re­lease, is­sued on Sat­ur­day, said in part.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, of­fi­cers of the Vic­tim and Sup­port Unit, and so­cial work­ers will pro­vide the nec­es­sary coun­sel and sup­port need­ed to the of­fi­cers and the fam­i­lies in­volved.

On April 22, four po­lice of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force, re­spond­ed to a re­port in Rich Plain that there was an armed man in the area. Dur­ing the ex­er­cise gun­shots were fired, hit­ting and even­tu­al­ly killing PC Gilkes.

Ini­tial­ly, some of­fi­cers on the scene claimed Gilkes was shot by a civil­ian, 29-year-old Jehlano Rom­ney, who es­caped the scene. A mas­sive po­lice man­hunt en­sued over the next few days for Rom­ney who claimed his in­no­cence from the be­gin­ning. The find­ings of Gilkes’ au­top­sy added weight to Rom­ney’s claims.

A week af­ter the in­ci­dent, Rom­ney turned him­self in to po­lice un­der su­per­vi­sion by Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) di­rec­tor David West and gave in­for­ma­tion. He was re­leased with­out charge.

It was the sec­ond time in a mat­ter of weeks that po­lice of­fi­cers were charged with mur­der and re­lat­ed of­fences. On Ju­ly 17, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard SC gave in­struc­tions for eight po­lice of­fi­cers to be charged for the killing of three men at Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant in 2020.

The sergeant and sev­en con­sta­bles are ac­cused of fa­tal­ly shoot­ing Joel Ja­cob, 38, Noel Di­a­mond, 46, and Is­rael Moses Clin­ton, 27, in an in­ci­dent at Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, Mor­vant, on June 27, 2020. Part of the in­ci­dent was cap­tured on CCTV footage. The of­fi­cers charged in that mat­ter are Sgt Joseph Solomon, Cpl Charles Bu­dri, PC Sher­win Bap­tiste, PC Col­in Fur­longe, PC Vaughn St Cyr, PC Jameel Mo­hammed, PC Sean Lord and PC Mark Lewis.

An­oth­er ten of­fi­cers are still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, con­spir­a­cy to per­vert the course of pub­lic jus­tice and oth­er of­fences.