An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

As po­lice-in­volved killings con­tin­ue to rise, re­newed con­cerns have emerged over the ab­sence of body cam­era footage in in­ves­ti­ga­tions, de­spite reg­u­la­tions re­quir­ing of­fi­cers to wear the de­vices.

Each po­lice-in­volved fa­tal shoot­ing trig­gers par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA). How­ev­er, PCA di­rec­tor David West says the au­thor­i­ty has yet to re­ceive any body cam­era footage from the TTPS in re­la­tion to any of the 27 fa­tal in­ci­dents record­ed so far this year.

With 32 peo­ple killed by po­lice to date, West de­scribed the lack of such ev­i­dence as “pass­ing strange.”

His lat­est com­ments mir­ror con­cerns he raised in Au­gust 2024, when he dis­closed that the PCA had not re­ceived any footage cap­tured by po­lice body cam­eras de­spite 37 fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings hav­ing been record­ed up to that time.

Con­tin­u­ing his call for of­fi­cers to wear body cam­eras as re­quired un­der po­lice reg­u­la­tions, West said the tech­nol­o­gy would en­hance ac­count­abil­i­ty and im­prove scruti­ny of po­lice use of force.

“The ben­e­fit of body-worn cam­eras would be greater ac­count­abil­i­ty and an ef­fec­tive cri­tique of po­lice use of force. It is pass­ing strange that for the year, the PCA has not had the ben­e­fit of any body-worn cam­era footage.”

Re­fer­ring to the De­part­men­tal Or­der man­dat­ing the use of the de­vices, West added: “The num­ber of po­lice- in­volved shoot­ings in Trinidad and To­ba­go is a cause for con­cern.”

Ques­tions re­gard­ing West’s con­cerns were for­ward­ed to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro but re­mained unan­swered up to pub­li­ca­tion.

TTPS pol­i­cy on body cam­eras

The TTPS’s De­part­men­tal Or­der 75 of 2016 specif­i­cal­ly gov­erns the use of body-worn cam­eras.

In its in­tro­duc­tion, the TTPS ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tant role the de­vices play in mod­ern polic­ing, not­ing that they are used by law en­force­ment agen­cies world­wide to pro­mote trans­paren­cy, record state­ments, doc­u­ment be­hav­iour and oth­er ev­i­dence, and de­ter un­pro­fes­sion­al, il­le­gal and in­ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct by both po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

It was against this back­drop that the TTPS com­mit­ted to in­tro­duc­ing body-worn cam­eras as part of polic­ing op­er­a­tions in T&.

Un­der the sec­tion out­lin­ing the in­ten­tion of the pol­i­cy, the TTPS pledged to:

“Ful­fil its fun­da­men­tal du­ty to serve the com­mu­ni­ty; to safe­guard lives and prop­er­ty; to pro­tect the in­no­cent against de­cep­tion, the weak against op­pres­sion or in­tim­i­da­tion; the peace­ful against vi­o­lence or dis­or­der and to re­spect the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of all to lib­er­ty, equal­i­ty and jus­tice.”

The or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so stat­ed that it had em­barked “on a dri­ve to en­sure that there is a mea­sure of trans­paren­cy in all our dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties and op­er­a­tions in an at­tempt to bring jus­tice, peace and se­cu­ri­ty for all.”

The TTPS fur­ther em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of body cam­eras in main­tain­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Al­though we gen­er­al­ly take a se­ri­ous view of all ac­tiv­i­ties of po­lice of­fi­cers, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volv­ing shoot­ings and se­ri­ous mis­con­duct, the use of body-worn cam­eras is dif­fer­ent be­cause of the po­ten­tial to serve as a check against the abuse of pow­er by po­lice of­fi­cers and al­ter­na­tive­ly as pro­tec­tion to the po­lice of­fi­cer from false ac­cu­sa­tions by mem­bers of the pub­lic.”

The pol­i­cy recog­nised that, his­tor­i­cal­ly, en­coun­ters be­tween po­lice of­fi­cers and the pub­lic of­ten lacked video or au­dio ev­i­dence, re­sult­ing in con­flict­ing ver­sions of events.

“Body-worn cam­eras have the po­ten­tial to bring a win-win sit­u­a­tion by help­ing to pro­tect the pub­lic against po­lice mis­con­duct, and at the same time shall help to pro­tect the po­lice against false ac­cu­sa­tions of abuse by the pub­lic,” the doc­u­ment states.

The TTPS al­so ar­gued that the use of the de­vices dur­ing ac­tive du­ty would help re­duce pub­lic com­plaints and pro­vide an ob­jec­tive record of in­ter­ac­tions in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct.

“The use of body-worn cam­eras by po­lice of­fi­cers on ac­tive du­ty would great­ly re­duce com­plaints made by mem­bers of the pub­lic, and serve as a record against al­leged acts of abuse and mis­con­duct by law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.”

Un­der the pol­i­cy, body cam­eras were in­tend­ed to video­tape and au­dio-record law en­force­ment en­coun­ters and in­ter­ac­tions.

Among the stat­ed ob­jec­tives were en­hanc­ing of­fi­cer safe­ty, record­ing state­ments and events, sup­port­ing re­ports and court pre­sen­ta­tions, pre­serv­ing ev­i­dence for in­ves­ti­ga­tions, pro­vid­ing an im­par­tial tool for self-eval­u­a­tion and train­ing, strength­en­ing pub­lic trust through fac­tu­al au­dio-vi­su­al records, and sup­ply­ing ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence for ju­di­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ceed­ings.

The cam­eras were to be is­sued to the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion Of­fi­cer (SDO) re­spon­si­ble for each sta­tion and stored se­cure­ly on sta­tion com­pounds.

The or­der al­so made clear that of­fi­cers were not per­mit­ted to re­pair the equip­ment them­selves.

“Mal­func­tions, dam­age, loss, or theft of the body-worn cam­era equip­ment shall be im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed to the shift su­per­vi­sor.”

Po­lice-In­volved Fa­tal Shoot­ings

Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber 2024: 38 in­ci­dents, 55 killed

Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber 2025: 56 in­ci­dents, 69 killed

Jan­u­ary 2026 to present: 27 in­ci­dents, 32 killed