Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) says it is pre­pared to act against its own of­fi­cers as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to five mem­bers de­tained un­der Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer ASP Owie Rus­sell said the key take­away for the pub­lic should be the ser­vice’s will­ing­ness to hold its own ac­count­able.

“I am proud to say that, notwith­stand­ing our is­sues, the Po­lice Ser­vice is will­ing to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to deal with our own,” he said.

Rus­sell stressed that of­fi­cers are not ar­bi­trar­i­ly placed un­der PDOs, ex­plain­ing that such ac­tions are based on in­tel­li­gence.

“PDOs arise from in­for­ma­tion that is analysed and de­vel­oped in­to in­tel­li­gence. No one is ran­dom­ly placed on a PDO. There must be some lev­el of in­volve­ment or as­so­ci­a­tion to war­rant that ac­tion,” he said.

He not­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in these mat­ters re­main on­go­ing, with au­thor­i­ties con­tin­u­ing to gath­er and as­sess ev­i­dence to de­ter­mine whether charges can be laid.

“If there is suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to pre­fer charges at the end of the process, that will be done. If, at the end of the PDO pe­ri­od, there is in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence, we may have to re­lease the of­fi­cers. How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tions will con­tin­ue as we seek to build on the in­for­ma­tion avail­able,” he said.

Rus­sell al­so un­der­scored that de­ci­sions to charge po­lice of­fi­cers are not made uni­lat­er­al­ly by the TTPS. He ex­plained that case files must be sub­mit­ted to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for re­view.

“When it comes to pre­fer­ring charges against po­lice of­fi­cers or any mem­ber of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, a file must be sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, who re­views the stan­dard of ev­i­dence and pro­vides in­struc­tions,” he said.

He added that the TTPS seeks to avoid lay­ing charges with­out suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence, warn­ing that pre­ma­ture ac­tion could re­sult in le­gal con­se­quences for the State.

“It is prefer­able to re­lease an in­di­vid­ual and con­tin­ue the in­ves­ti­ga­tion than to charge them and bring them be­fore the court with in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence, which could ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult in the State hav­ing to pay com­pen­sa­tion,” Rus­sell said.