The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia which show a man ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly abus­ing and threat­en­ing a woman in­side a ve­hi­cle.

The TTPS said a re­port was made at the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion, prompt­ing of­fi­cers at­tached to the Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit, Re­gion 2, to be­gin in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

No. 19042 WPC Per­sad is lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The po­lice said state­ments are be­ing record­ed and the mat­ter is re­ceiv­ing its full at­ten­tion.

The TTPS is al­so urg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic not to con­tin­ue shar­ing the video, cit­ing the dig­ni­ty and pri­va­cy of the woman in­volved.

In a state­ment on Wednes­day, the po­lice used the in­ci­dent to re­mind women ex­pe­ri­enc­ing do­mes­tic abuse that they should seek help.

The TTPS said do­mes­tic abuse is not lim­it­ed to phys­i­cal vi­o­lence and can in­clude threats, in­tim­i­da­tion, in­sults and con­trol­ling be­hav­iour.

Vic­tims are be­ing en­cour­aged to re­port abuse at any po­lice sta­tion or Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit. The TTPS said of­fi­cers are trained to re­spond to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ters with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

The po­lice are al­so ad­vis­ing vic­tims to con­fide in some­one they trust, such as a friend, fam­i­ly mem­ber or col­league, who can pro­vide sup­port and seek as­sis­tance if nec­es­sary.

The TTPS rec­om­mends hav­ing a safe­ty plan, in­clud­ing keep­ing im­por­tant doc­u­ments, a phone and emer­gency con­tact num­bers read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble. Vic­tims are al­so en­cour­aged to es­tab­lish a code word with a trust­ed per­son to sig­nal when help is need­ed.

Where it is safe to do so, vic­tims should pre­serve threat­en­ing mes­sages, voice notes, pho­tographs and videos, as these may as­sist po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The TTPS al­so re­mind­ed vic­tims that they can ap­ply to the Mag­is­trates' Court for a Pro­tec­tion Or­der un­der the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act.