Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad is call­ing for the manda­to­ry use of body-worn cam­eras by po­lice of­fi­cers if Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) are even­tu­al­ly im­ple­ment­ed as part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

His com­ment came af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der last week in­di­cat­ed that Gov­ern­ment in­tend to re­turn the bill for con­sid­er­a­tion with the State of Emer­gency set to end on Thurs­day. The bill was de­feat­ed when it was first brought to Par­lia­ment in Jan­u­ary.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Seep­er­sad said body-worn cam­eras should be part of a broad­er frame­work of safe­guards to en­sure trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty when po­lice op­er­ate in com­mu­ni­ties des­ig­nat­ed un­der ZOSO.

He de­scribed ZOSO as a po­ten­tial op­tion as the coun­try tran­si­tions out of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), but stressed that any such ini­tia­tive must be ac­com­pa­nied by strong pro­tec­tions for hu­man rights.

Seep­er­sad al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for clear pro­ce­dures to re­port al­leged abus­es, as well as ju­di­cial over­sight of search­es and de­ten­tions.

He said manda­to­ry body cam­eras would help en­sure po­lice in­ter­ac­tions with the pub­lic are prop­er­ly doc­u­ment­ed.

“There are a lot of strate­gies that could ac­tu­al­ly be put in place to en­sure trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and that pro­ce­dures are car­ried out in a fair and non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry man­ner when of­fi­cers en­gage with com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Seep­er­sad cau­tioned against view­ing ZOSO sole­ly as a law en­force­ment tool.

While po­lice could use crime da­ta and in­tel­li­gence to tar­get high-crime ar­eas, he said the ini­tia­tive should al­so ad­dress the root caus­es of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty by cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple through ed­u­ca­tion, skills train­ing and oth­er so­cial in­ter­ven­tions.

“The core, and I think more im­por­tant el­e­ment of the ZOSO, is the po­ten­tial it has for in­ter­ven­tion to re­al­ly start tack­ling the dri­vers of crime and cre­at­ing op­tions for youths,” he said.

Seep­er­sad not­ed that this in­ter­ven­tion-fo­cused ap­proach formed part of the orig­i­nal ZOSO leg­is­la­tion, which was even­tu­al­ly struck down.

He said he hoped any re­vised leg­is­la­tion would ad­dress the con­tentious is­sues that sur­round­ed the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al while in­cor­po­rat­ing ro­bust hu­man rights pro­tec­tions.

The crim­i­nol­o­gist al­so sug­gest­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go could draw lessons from crime re­duc­tion strate­gies em­ployed dur­ing the SoE, in­clud­ing in­ten­si­fied polic­ing and the use of in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, he warned that ex­ces­sive force and heavy-hand­ed tac­tics could un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment.

He said pro­longed de­ten­tion fol­lowed by the re­lease of in­di­vid­u­als with­out charges could fos­ter re­sent­ment to­ward both the Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice, fur­ther erod­ing trust in pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Seep­er­sad said the coun­try must move be­yond ex­tra­or­di­nary crime-fight­ing mea­sures and de­vel­op sus­tain­able polic­ing strate­gies that en­able of­fi­cers to gath­er the ev­i­dence and in­tel­li­gence need­ed to suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cute known of­fend­ers.

He said ZOSO could play a role in that tran­si­tion, pro­vid­ed it bal­ances tar­get­ed en­force­ment with so­cial in­ter­ven­tions aimed at ad­dress­ing the un­der­ly­ing dri­vers of crime.