Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) is cur­rent­ly with­out a deputy di­rec­tor and is there­fore not ful­ly con­sti­tut­ed at this time, Guardian Me­dia has con­firmed.

This sit­u­a­tion has arisen fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of Michelle Solomon-Baksh’s con­tract last Wednes­day.

The PCA, how­ev­er, is still able to func­tion, al­beit in a lim­it­ed way, Guardian Me­dia has learnt.

Im­por­tant­ly, this in­cludes cit­i­zens still be­ing able to lodge com­plaints to the PCA.

How­ev­er, di­rec­tor David West said the is­sue of the PCA be­ing with­out a deputy di­rec­tor is ex­pect­ed to be rec­ti­fied “very soon.”

On June 29, 2017, then-pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona ap­point­ed Solomon-Baksh as the PCA’s deputy di­rec­tor for a term of five years.

Solomon-Baksh’s ap­point­ment came to an end on June 29.

The PCA is the on­ly civil­ian over­sight body in T&T.

It is an in­de­pen­dent body set up by Par­lia­ment to keep watch over the po­lice.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act came in­to ef­fect in 2007 as an act to es­tab­lish “an in­de­pen­dent body to in­ves­ti­gate crim­i­nal of­fences in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, po­lice cor­rup­tion and se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct and for oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 6(1) of the act, “The Au­thor­i­ty shall com­prise a Di­rec­tor and a Deputy Di­rec­tor to be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the joint ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.”

A per­son ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent as di­rec­tor or deputy di­rec­tor of the PCA has to have at least ten years of ex­pe­ri­ence as an at­tor­ney, and may be ap­point­ed from with­in the Com­mon­wealth.

The role and ne­ces­si­ty of the PCA has come to the fore again fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing’s po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in­ci­dent which re­sult­ed in the death of Fabi­an Richards, Niko Williams and Isa­iah Roberts.

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

Their deaths sparked protest ac­tion in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents along Nel­son Street, Sea Lots and Beetham Gar­dens yes­ter­day.

Last week, the PCA com­plet­ed its in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fa­tal shoot­ing of PC Clarence Gilkes in Rich Plain, Diego Mar­tin on April 22.

In a state­ment is­sued last Thurs­day, the PCA said it con­clud­ed that mem­bers of the TTPS abused their pow­er and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

“This in­ci­dent is one of the clear­est ex­am­ples of abuse of po­lice pow­er that the PCA has in­ves­ti­gat­ed to date,” said the PCA.

Ac­cord­ing to the PCA, the ev­i­dence re­vealed that of­fi­cers of the TTPS shot at an un­armed civil­ian and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, PC Clarence Gilkes be­came an un­in­tend­ed tar­get.

“The sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence gath­ered by the PCA clear­ly demon­strates PC Gilkes was fa­tal­ly shot by one of his fel­low of­fi­cers. How­ev­er, be­fore this ev­i­dence be­came ap­par­ent, the po­lice of­fi­cers in­formed the Ag. CoP that an un­armed civil­ian would have shot PC Gilkes, which led to his death, and caused the po­lice ser­vice to launch a man­hunt in or­der to ‘deal with the per­sons re­spon­si­ble for this act,” it stat­ed.

The PCA said it has made rec­om­men­da­tions to both the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the of­fice of the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on the mat­ter.