The law en­force­ment com­mu­ni­ty re­mained shocked and trau­ma­tised yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the killing of PC Dale May­ers on Mon­day night dur­ing a botched rob­bery at a bar in Ch­agua­nas.

Even as a spokesper­son for the Unique Bar and Restau­rant, Mon­trose Main Road, de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “un­for­tu­nate,” the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) urged law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to stand up and take back this coun­try from the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

May­ers, 53, of Riv­er Road, Ari­ma, was last as­signed to the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

He was shot twice dur­ing an at­tempt­ed rob­bery around 10.36 pm as he was en­joy­ing drinks in the com­pa­ny of his wife and a friend at the bar when a man armed with a gun walked in and point­ed it at the trio. He de­mand­ed mon­ey and valu­ables. 

May­ers drew his TTPS-is­sued firearm and fired sev­er­al shots in the di­rec­tion of the sus­pect, who sub­se­quent­ly re­turned fire, hit­ting May­ers in the up­per left back. 

The sus­pect ran out of the bar to­wards a track on the op­po­site side of the road and got in­to a wait­ing SUV. May­ers’ wife and friend took him to the Ch­agua­nas Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he suc­cumbed to in­juries while be­ing treat­ed.

He was pro­nounced dead at 11:06 pm.

Po­lice col­lect­ed May­ers’ TTPS pis­tol and one sil­ver and black firearm with the word “Fab­rique” on it. Spent cas­ings were al­so col­lect­ed.

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion got un­der­way on Mon­day night, po­lice of­fi­cers were alert­ed by med­ical per­son­nel at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal that a 23-year-old man from George Street in Port-of-Spain had come in seek­ing treat­ment for gun­shot wounds.

The de­scrip­tion of the sus­pect fit that of the man.

He was lat­er de­tained and placed un­der po­lice guard.

Bar spokesman: No trou­ble here 

Al­though the Unique Bar and Restau­rant re­mained closed for the morn­ing pe­ri­od yes­ter­day to al­low in­ves­ti­ga­tors to gath­er ev­i­dence, it did not pre­vent long-time pa­trons from flock­ing to the lo­ca­tion, which re­sumed op­er­a­tions around noon.

The bul­let holes in the met­al gate and walls were not enough to de­ter peo­ple as they or­dered drinks and roti.

A spokesper­son for the es­tab­lish­ment, who asked not to be named, said the fam­i­ly-run busi­ness had been op­er­at­ing for the past 50 years.

And while the area has been plagued with sev­er­al in­ci­dents of crime, in­clud­ing mur­ders, he claimed, “It’s peo­ple from the out­side who cause trou­ble. This bar is like an in­sti­tu­tion, so we don’t have trou­ble from the com­mu­ni­ty.”

The bar of­fi­cial said May­ers was a reg­u­lar cus­tomer who was al­ways warm and smil­ing.

“This whole sit­u­a­tion is very un­for­tu­nate, and we hope the per­pe­tra­tors are brought to jus­tice,” he said. 

He added, “The crime sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try right now is ter­ri­ble, it is just out of con­trol.”

Col­leagues over­come with grief 

Mean­while, coun­selling is ex­pect­ed to be of­fered to May­ers’ col­leagues at the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was as­signed.

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said both male and fe­male of­fi­cers open­ly cried af­ter news that May­ers had been killed. The se­nior of­fi­cer added that the mood at the sta­tion was solemn and som­bre, as of­fi­cers found it “hard” to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing as nor­mal yes­ter­day.

He de­scribed his friend and col­league as de­pend­able and self­less, “A good po­lice of­fi­cer.”

“If you didn’t have, he would go out of his way to make sure you were tak­en care of,” he shared.

May­ers was al­so a card en­thu­si­ast who loved All-Fours. 

Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent: Take back the coun­try

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) ASP Gideon Dick­son con­demned the killing.

He as­sured, “We will en­sure that the re­sources avail­able are utilised to have this per­pe­tra­tor brought be­fore jus­tice.”

He urged all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the ju­di­cia­ry and the pub­lic, to join hands and dou­ble down in the ef­fort to fight crime. 

Dick­son went on, “For when the ‘Gate Keep­ers’ are at­tacked, then all that re­mains is a frag­ile so­ci­ety whose fun­da­men­tal rights of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty be­come com­pro­mised.

“We, as an as­so­ci­a­tion, and by ex­ten­sion, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, can­not sit back and ac­cept these trans­gres­sions.

“Enough is enough, then law-abid­ing and the law en­forcers are greater in num­ber, and it’s time we all work col­lec­tive­ly to rid our coun­try of this scourge of crime,” he said.