Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man is warn­ing about the po­ten­tial for abuse of pow­er fol­low­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of three po­lice posts in To­ba­go.

The at­tor­ney has called for greater over­sight and scruti­ny of of­fi­cers and sol­diers when the joint op­er­a­tions be­gin in Ply­mouth, Sig­nal Hill and Good­wood.

Con­struc­tion of the posts be­gan on Fri­day, with Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine al­ready ad­vo­cat­ing for a fourth fa­cil­i­ty. Au­gus­tine said the se­cu­ri­ty posts would pro­vide res­i­dents with a greater sense of se­cu­ri­ty and re­sult in faster re­sponse times to emer­gen­cies.

Roberts-Radg­man yes­ter­day con­curred with the ra­tio­nale, not­ing crime in To­ba­go has been es­ca­lat­ing over the last five years.

“It is some­thing we have been watch­ing close­ly, and we wel­come any op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress it,” she said.

How­ev­er, she said the ini­tia­tive would on­ly be suc­cess­ful if there is trust be­tween the pub­lic and se­cu­ri­ty forces. She added that there must be ac­count­abil­i­ty when­ev­er al­le­ga­tions arise about law en­force­ment over­step­ping the bound­ary.

Ref­er­enc­ing the 2025 po­lice-in­volved fa­tal shoot­ings of 74-year-old Frank Sandy in Mt St George and Ronelle Mar­celle in Bethel, as well as a re­cent al­ter­ca­tion in­volv­ing sol­diers and a civil­ian, Roberts-Radg­man said the pub­lic is still de­mand­ing an­swers on those in­ci­dents.

Sandy was shot and killed around 5 am by his neigh­bour as he tried to en­ter the of­fi­cer’s home. Rel­a­tives said Sandy’s mem­o­ry was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing and spec­u­lat­ed that he may have been dis­ori­ent­ed and thought he was en­ter­ing his own home a short dis­tance away.

Mar­celle, who was al­leged­ly want­ed for sev­er­al of­fences, was shot by an off-du­ty cop as he tried to ar­rest him in Bethel. A video of the in­ci­dent was shared on so­cial me­dia show­ing the of­fi­cer grap­pling with Mar­celle, who was hand­cuffed. Po­lice said Mar­celle at­tacked the of­fi­cer with a knife and cut­lass and was shot in keep­ing with the TTPS use-of-force pol­i­cy.

Ear­li­er this year, sol­diers were al­leged­ly in a con­fronta­tion with a civil­ian af­ter a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent. The civil­ian was left hos­pi­talised with sev­er­al in­juries, in­clud­ing the loss of three teeth.

In June, po­lice of­fi­cer Ronel Dates was charged with wound­ing with in­tent af­ter shoot­ing 37-year-old Os­ae Mur­ray dur­ing har­vest cel­e­bra­tions in Bloody Bay. Dates was re­port­ed­ly in a re­la­tion­ship with the for­mer com­pan­ion of Mur­ray.

Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty head David West said both fa­tal shoot­ings are un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Roberts-Radg­man said, “Right now, we have two To­bag­on­ian fam­i­lies that are still griev­ing. Still — a year lat­er — have not re­ceived any sort of jus­tice, have not re­ceived any feed­back on the sta­tus of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the shoot­ings in­volv­ing Ronelle and Frank. Then, of course, we had one with Kevon Lewis in­volv­ing the mil­i­tary that took place in Crown Point ear­li­er this year.”

The sen­a­tor al­so queried why lo­cal con­trac­tors were side­lined for the con­struc­tion of the var­i­ous se­cu­ri­ty posts. She added To­ba­go’s “once thriv­ing con­struc­tion sec­tor” is suf­fer­ing un­der Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s lead­er­ship.

“We had quite a lot of small- to medi­um-sized con­trac­tors in To­ba­go, and, tra­di­tion­al­ly, these sorts of projects would have been un­der­tak­en by those con­trac­tors. It cre­ates job and op­por­tu­ni­ties for To­bag­o­ni­ans and in­dige­nous busi­ness­es.”

De­scrib­ing the de­ci­sion to use Trinidad con­trac­tors as shock­ing, Roberts-Radg­man said she was con­cerned about the in­dus­try.

“Larg­er con­tracts, larg­er projects, you might be able to jus­ti­fy those. You might say the scope en­tails or re­quires ex­ter­nal providers come in. But some­thing as sim­ple as this, why would you de­prive lo­cal con­trac­tors of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­take a mi­nor scope as this?”

Far­ley: Hyp­o­crit­i­cal PNM politi­cis­ing crime

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine, how­ev­er, has dis­missed her con­cerns, not­ing the THA has no re­mit over na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty projects.

Af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, he said the THA agreed to pro­vide state­lands for the posts.

“Out­side of those ar­eas, the THA has ze­ro role in the pro­cure­ment of the posts. That is a func­tion of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the cen­tral gov­ern­ment that has to­tal re­mit for se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters on the is­land. I can on­ly as­sume that a sin­gle con­trac­tor was giv­en the job na­tion­al­ly,” Au­gus­tine said.

He al­so ac­cused the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil of hypocrisy, not­ing there were no ob­jec­tions dur­ing the hir­ing of “Chi­nese to build the fire sta­tion in Rox­bor­ough, or that they se­lect­ed NH In­ter­na­tion­al Caribbean Lim­it­ed to build Shir­van Po­lice Sta­tion or that UNI­COM Lim­it­ed built Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion.”

He al­so claimed Roberts-Radg­man was politi­cis­ing crime, say­ing there was no ad­di­tion­al risk of abuse of pow­er by se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices op­er­at­ing in com­mu­ni­ties. He said To­bag­o­ni­ans have wel­comed the ini­tia­tive and are look­ing for­ward to the in­creased se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence.

“So, I don’t know what abuse we are ref­er­enc­ing here. The Sen­a­tor is just par­rot­ing her par­ty’s talk­ing points. The Sen­a­tor will do well not to politi­cise the re­sponse to crime in this coun­try.”