Ex­pe­dite it.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has urged au­thor­i­ties prob­ing the re­cent killings of Mor­vant res­i­dents Joel Ja­cob, Noel Di­a­mond and Is­rael Clin­ton to ex­pe­dite mat­ters or else the wounds from the sit­u­a­tion will fes­ter and al­low “those who want to mis­lead and mis­guide to have an open field to op­er­ate.”

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day on the re­cent al­leged ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings in Mor­vant, Row­ley said he was told two or three po­lice units met up with the three young men and there were rea­sons to use force which re­sult­ed in the deaths.

Say­ing those gen­uine calls for jus­tice are com­plete­ly cor­rect, he said that jus­tice re­quires that peo­ple who are wronged should be able to de­ter­mine that their con­cerns are met and there’s cer­tain rec­om­pense. But for it to be served, he said ev­i­dence must be gath­ered.

He said the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty has the du­ty to probe po­lice of­fi­cers’ ac­tions, es­pe­cial­ly where the out­come is one of such great sad­ness gen­er­at­ing such great anger.

But he said he would be less than hon­est to say “leave it to the PCA,” since he too had ex­pe­ri­enced the sit­u­a­tion be­fore and it al­so hadn’t been T&T’s ex­pe­ri­ence to say leave it to the PCA and one day they’d give the re­sult.

“It’s not been func­tion­ing that way,” he said, adding that ab­sence of con­fi­dence ex­ists.

“So we must en­sure there are in­ves­ti­ga­tions that gen­er­ate ev­i­dence.”

But to call for im­me­di­ate ac­tion with­out ev­i­dence is to call for re­venge, he said, warn­ing against that.

DIAMOND NOEL

On a pos­si­ble time­line for the PCA to com­plete the task, he said Gov­ern­ment has no con­trol over the in­de­pen­dent au­thor­i­ty. But he said all sys­tems should move with alacrity to en­sure pub­lic hurt is salved in a time­ly way.

“It’s when it’s de­layed the pop­u­la­tion will lose con­fi­dence,” he said.

As Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil chair­man, Row­ley said he ex­pect­ed ev­i­dence will be gath­ered and will de­ter­mine who was re­spon­si­ble to be held ac­count­able. If the process doesn’t, the next step is a full coro­ner’s in­quest to de­ter­mine who’s re­spon­si­ble, he said.

“We can’t take the po­si­tion there are too many peo­ple on the scene and we can’t de­ter­mine…the ev­i­dence has to be sort­ed through to its fullest.”

Row­ley said he knew of no short­age of PCA re­sources but said if any are re­quest­ed that can be giv­en off­hand, they’d be made avail­able.

“But the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty needs to be dis­charged,” he stressed.

He said he ex­pect­ed in com­ing days every ef­fort will be made to “col­lect every sliv­er of ev­i­dence” to en­sure jus­tice.

The PM al­so said he was sat­is­fied with how po­lice re­spond­ed to Tues­day’s protests in Port-of-Spain. He said the po­lice must be on a mis­sion to win the pop­u­la­tion’s trust and must al­ways be mind­ful that it has to win that or polic­ing cit­i­zens will be­come more dif­fi­cult. Say­ing he was pleased to see a re­cent poll which in­di­cat­ed that con­fi­dence in po­lice was grow­ing, he said the re­cent de­vel­op­ments could dam­age that ef­fort.

On po­lice lan­guage he said, “I’d like to see lan­guage that in­di­cates we’re not go­ing to give up the ter­ri­to­ry to those who don’t want to be law-abid­ing and lan­guage that gives com­fort that the po­lice is up to the task.”

He said law-abid­ing cit­i­zens should have an in­ter­est in the po­lice be­ing viewed as pro­tec­tors since if some­day some­thing hap­pened in T&T that peo­ple thought Tues­day’s in­ci­dent might have be­come, “...The next name you’ll be call­ing be­sides God’s is the po­lice.”