Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge is ad­vis­ing con­stituents and cit­i­zens that dur­ing a home in­va­sion, they can shoot first and “ex­plain your­self af­ter.” He says that pro­vi­sion, among oth­ers, will be avail­able un­der the pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to en­act. He says an­oth­er mea­sure would al­low a vic­tim to de­fend them­selves against an in­trud­er be­fore they are even phys­i­cal­ly at­tacked.

Sturge made the stun­ning com­ments dur­ing a stand-your-ground con­sul­ta­tion at the San­gre Grande Civic Cen­tre on Tues­day.

“You don’t have to wait to see what the at­tack­er is go­ing to do. You don’t have to wait to see if he pulls a gun or a cut­lass or any­thing like this. You can, once you hon­est­ly be­lieve that you are un­der at­tack, or that an at­tack is about to take place, or is im­mi­nent—as they say here—once you be­lieve an at­tack is im­mi­nent, you can strike first. You can strike first and kill first,” Sturge said.

Sturge, who was a crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney be­fore his suc­cess­ful run in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion said the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion dif­fers vast­ly from ex­ist­ing self-de­fence laws.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­ready said the stand-your-ground laws will fol­low the Flori­da mod­el. Flori­da en­act­ed its stand-your-ground laws in 2005.

Sturge said the pro­posed law gives a home­own­er or vic­tim lee­way to de­fend them­selves be­fore the at­tack­er even gets to strike the first blow.

“If, how­ev­er, the in­vad­er has a cut­lass and is swing­ing, or about to swing, or you feel you don’t have the ex­per­tise to de­fend against a cut­lass, you can shoot and kill. If it’s in his waist, you don’t have to wait for him to reach for it, you can go up on him and wet him with your own cut­lass or your axe or what­ev­er. And in that sit­u­a­tion, the court—and it’s set out here in the bill—the court would look at all of the cir­cum­stances to de­ter­mine whether your ac­tion was rea­son­able.”

Sturge added that the in­trud­er could al­so be shot in the back un­der par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances.

Sturge said: “You know they al­ways say if he run­ning away you can’t shoot? No. Cir­cum­stances—he’s run­ning away armed with a gun—you could shoot him in the back and ex­plain your­self af­ter, that’s the re­al­i­ty. If he’s run­ning away with­out a gun, that’s a dif­fer­ent thing.”

When it comes to crim­i­nals dressed as po­lice of­fi­cers at­tempt­ing to in­vade a per­son’s home, Sturge said whether a cit­i­zen is sure or un­sure of the per­son’s au­then­tic­i­ty, it is bet­ter to de­fend and live than to hes­i­tate and die.

“If, by the man­ner in which they are be­hav­ing, you are not sure if they are po­lice or not, what do you think is the com­mon-sense thing to do? I’ll leave you with a lit­tle quote I learned years ago from my good friend Her­bert Vol­ney, who said, ‘it’s bet­ter to be judged by 12 than car­ried by six’. If you are not sure that the per­sons out­side are law en­force­ment and you feel that they might be pos­ing as law en­force­ment, and you feel that if you don’t act you could die, you are en­ti­tled to shoot.”

He said while law en­force­ment of­fi­cers are au­tho­rised to en­ter some­one’s prop­er­ty, he does not agree with prison of­fi­cers, es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers, and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) mem­bers be­ing on that list.

He said the lines be­tween the op­er­a­tions of of­fi­cial law en­force­ment busi­ness and per­son­al in­tru­sion are of­ten blurred, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to re­la­tion­ships.

“A ques­tion I am usu­al­ly asked: what if my ex-boyfriend is a po­lice and I horn him be­cause he does fin­ish the job faster than Us­ain Bolt, or what he has is a sikiye fig, and the new Rasta­far­i­an have a gros michel and is a marathon man and I don’t want the po­lice no more, and that man comes to your house? The fact that he is po­lice and the fact that he is in a uni­form does not pre­vent you and your new Rasta­far­i­an lover from de­fend­ing your home,” the min­is­ter stressed.

He al­so said the use of il­le­gal weapons can be al­lowed to de­fend some­one’s home and valu­ables. How­ev­er, while you may not be charged with mur­der should the in­trud­er die, Sturge warned that a cit­i­zen could still be charged with pos­ses­sion of the il­le­gal weapon.

“If you have an il­le­gal firearm—and let me press pause here, be­cause you know the me­dia loves to mis­quote—I am not rec­om­mend­ing that you go out and get an il­le­gal firearm, let me make that clear. I’m rec­om­mend­ing that you do not do that.

“But if you al­ready have one, for what­ev­er rea­son, and you use it when they come to in­vade your house, at that point, the judge is not go­ing to say, well, ‘the firearm he had was il­le­gal, so he should not kill, he should have let the man chop his head off or rape his daugh­ter and all that’. Lis­ten, if it’s il­le­gal and it is nec­es­sary for you to use it to de­fend your­self or your fam­i­ly, then the law says you can use it.”

This, how­ev­er, stood in con­trast to what his Cab­i­net col­league Sad­dam Ho­sein said dur­ing the first con­sul­ta­tion last Wednes­day in Barataria. Back then, Ho­sein ad­vised against us­ing an il­le­gal gun. Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der lat­er said weapons of op­por­tu­ni­ty could be used but al­so ad­vised against il­le­gal weapons.

Gon­za­les: It’s more
rub­bish from min­is­ter

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Sturge’s com­ments have al­ready caused alarm. For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day that the in­tent of the law is not to “gun down chil­dren steal­ing fruits and run­ning away,” but said in a gun­fight, the at­tack­ers may not al­ways be fac­ing the home­own­er. He stressed that train­ing gun own­ers should be a pri­or­i­ty.
For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the bill “ex­posed the bel­ly of the beast” and called on cit­i­zens to ask them­selves whether this is what they want for the coun­try.
“I don’t think it’s a slip of the tongue. It is the true in­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment, un­der the guise of a so-called pol­i­cy that is meant to pro­tect in­no­cent cit­i­zens. The same Wayne Sturge who lied to the coun­try by say­ing a 65-inch TV was found in a pris­on­er’s cell, on­ly to be em­bar­rassed and re­fut­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion. He now finds his voice again and ut­ters more rub­bish that should send chills down the bod­ies of right-think­ing cit­i­zens,” Gon­za­les said.
Al­so con­tact­ed, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor David West said he will com­ment on the min­is­ter’s state­ment at a lat­er date, while Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said he had noth­ing to say.
Mean­while, Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son made it clear his of­fi­cers do not ar­bi­trar­i­ly en­ter peo­ple’s homes. He said es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers on­ly do so when lend­ing sup­port to po­lice of­fi­cers.