Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), tasked with in­de­pen­dent­ly scru­ti­n­is­ing po­lice shoot­ings, says it is of­ten learn­ing of the in­ci­dents through the news rather than re­ceiv­ing the re­ports it is legal­ly re­quired to get from of­fi­cials.

It says the com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­down is so se­ri­ous that the PCA warns its own records may not even show the true num­ber of po­lice shoot­ings in Trinidad and To­ba­go — mean­ing some cas­es may nev­er reach the PCA un­less they be­come pub­lic.

In writ­ten re­spons­es to Guardian Me­dia, the PCA said: “With few ex­cep­tions, the Au­thor­i­ty be­comes aware of po­lice in­volved shoot­ings via me­dia re­ports, not from di­rect re­ports from the per­sons charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­form the Au­thor­i­ty.”

The PCA said Sec­tion 48(2) of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act re­quires the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, among oth­er of­fice­hold­ers, to “im­me­di­ate­ly” in­form the Au­thor­i­ty of in­for­ma­tion or com­plaints that fall un­der its pow­ers. The PCA said that should in­clude po­lice shoot­ings, whether some­one is killed or in­jured.

But it said there have been “con­sis­tent fail­ures” by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or oth­er named of­fice­hold­ers to do so.

The PCA said this could mean its own record of po­lice shoot­ings is lim­it­ed to in­ci­dents it picks up in the me­dia and “may not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the to­tal num­ber of such in­ci­dents.”

The prob­lem comes as the PCA dis­closed that, as of Oc­to­ber 7, it had 257 open po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Of those, 180 are fa­tal shoot­ing in­ci­dents in­volv­ing 231 vic­tims.

The PCA said the num­ber of vic­tims is high­er than the num­ber of fa­tal in­ci­dents be­cause some shoot­ings in­volved more than one per­son be­ing killed.

It stressed that the num­ber of po­lice shoot­ings alone does not mean force was un­law­ful. It said each case has to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed on its own facts, in­clud­ing whether the force used was nec­es­sary and pro­por­tion­ate and whether of­fi­cers fol­lowed es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

But its fig­ures showed the scale of the work now be­fore the watch­dog.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2023 and Au­gust 31, 2026, the PCA record­ed 160 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing in­ci­dents in­volv­ing 205 vic­tims. It al­so record­ed 71 non-fa­tal shoot­ing in­ci­dents in­volv­ing 82 vic­tims.

The high­est num­ber was in 2025, when the PCA record­ed 56 fa­tal shoot­ing in­ci­dents and 69 vic­tims. In 2024, it record­ed 38 in­ci­dents and 55 vic­tims. In 2023, there were 39 in­ci­dents and 49 vic­tims. Up to Au­gust this year, there were 27 in­ci­dents and 32 vic­tims.

Those fig­ures do not match da­ta re­cent­ly re­leased by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

The TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch record­ed 144 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing in­ci­dents and 188 fa­tal­i­ties over the same pe­ri­od. Its fig­ures were low­er than the PCA’s in every year.

The dif­fer­ence is even wider for non-fa­tal shoot­ings. TTPS record­ed 149 non-fa­tal shoot­ing in­ci­dents in­volv­ing 222 in­jured peo­ple be­tween 2023 and Au­gust 2026, while the PCA record­ed 71 in­ci­dents in­volv­ing 82 vic­tims.

The PCA said po­lice shoot­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions can take time be­cause it must wait on in­for­ma­tion or ev­i­dence from oth­er peo­ple or agen­cies.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin has pushed back against the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty’s claim that po­lice shoot­ings are not be­ing prop­er­ly re­port­ed to the watch­dog, say­ing the TTPS stands by the fig­ures pro­duced by its Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch.

Re­spond­ing to the PCA’s con­cern that its fig­ures dif­fer from those of the TTPS be­cause it is of­ten not di­rect­ly no­ti­fied of shoot­ings, Ben­jamin told Guardian Me­dia: “There is a law that says he who al­leges must prove.”

“We have giv­en all stats. If they are say­ing oth­er­wise, I am say­ing he who al­leges must prove,” he said.

Ben­jamin said CA­PA re­mains the source the Po­lice Ser­vice re­lies on for its of­fi­cial crime da­ta.

“We have al­ways used the CA­PA da­ta to be the da­ta that comes from the po­lice. And that is what we con­tin­ue to use as the fi­nal fig­ures that we have to guide us.”

He de­clined to di­rect­ly ad­dress the PCA’s al­le­ga­tion of fail­ures to no­ti­fy the Au­thor­i­ty, say­ing the mat­ter could be tak­en up with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Ben­jamin al­so de­fend­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice over the num­ber of fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings.

He said the fig­ures have to be con­sid­ered in the con­text of crime lev­els and po­lice op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

Ben­jamin linked the high­er 2025 fig­ure to the large num­ber of po­lice op­er­a­tions car­ried out dur­ing the SoE.

“If you look at that, the op­er­a­tions were ex­ten­sive over that pe­ri­od in terms of the SoE,” he said.

He ar­gued that the 31 fa­tal­i­ties record­ed up to Au­gust 2026 rep­re­sent­ed a re­duc­tion, rather than an in­crease, when com­pared with the 65 record­ed for all of 2025.

Ben­jamin said of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to act pro­fes­sion­al­ly, re­main with­in the law and fol­low the Po­lice Ser­vice’s use-of-force pol­i­cy.

“We are not hap­py when we see that there are po­lice shoot­ings,” he said, but added that po­lice would not “back down” when con­front­ed by peo­ple com­mit­ting crimes.

He said in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to po­lice shoot­ings are in­tend­ed to en­sure “trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty, and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”