JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The moth­er of Ja­mal Charles, the po­lice of­fi­cer killed while on du­ty at a Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment guard booth on Thurs­day, says her son want­ed to be a “good po­lice.”

“He told me when he joined the po­lice force, he said, ‘Mom­my, I’m a po­lice of­fi­cer, and I’m go­ing to be a good po­lice of­fi­cer.’ I said, ‘Yes, be a good po­lice of­fi­cer.’ So, he told me, ‘Mom­my, I’m go­ing to be a good po­lice of­fi­cer,’ and the po­lice killed him,” Mar­garet Charles said yes­ter­day.

Po­lice re­port­ed that Charles and an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer were play­ing with their Glock pis­tols, when Charles was shot around 3.25 pm on Thurs­day. Charles, the fa­ther of a five-year-old girl, was shot in the neck and died at the scene.

His 70-year-old moth­er spoke with Guardian Me­dia at her Pi­o­neer Dri­ve, Pe­tit Val­ley home yes­ter­day. The pen­sion­er does not be­lieve the po­lice ver­sion of what took place.

“I think they say the gun ting off, but it ting off on Ja­mal. That kind of strange. But I don’t want to judge any­body to say that a po­lice killed my son. I don’t know. I don’t want to judge. But I find it kind of fun­ny. I find it kind of fun­ny how the gun just dis­charged on him.”

Mean­while, gun ex­pert Dirk Barnes be­lieves the rules of han­dling a firearm were not fol­lowed, lead­ing to the in­ci­dent.

“When you start to look at the cir­cum­stances around this par­tic­u­lar event, you would have re­alised that the ba­sic rules of gun safe­ty were not ap­plied by these of­fi­cers. And now one has paid the price with his life, and the oth­ers, they are now un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Barnes said.

He added that a Glock, an Aus­tri­an-made weapon, has a safe­ty mech­a­nism in the trig­ger to pre­vent ac­ci­den­tal shoot­ings. This, he said, makes fir­ing the weapon an in­ten­tion­al thing. How­ev­er, he did not want to say the shoot­ing was in­ten­tion­al.

“So, in the De­fence Force, where I’m from, they will call it a neg­li­gent dis­charge. Peo­ple talk about ac­ci­dents, but ac­ci­dents don’t hap­pen with firearms if they’re op­er­at­ed cor­rect­ly. That’s a ba­sic rule.”

Mean­while, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is urg­ing the pub­lic not to spec­u­late. In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, he said the mat­ter was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“While pre­lim­i­nary re­ports sug­gest the in­ci­dent in­volved mis­han­dling of a ser­vice weapon, we must al­low the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to take its full course. It is es­sen­tial that we es­tab­lish the facts with clar­i­ty and fair­ness be­fore draw­ing con­clu­sions. We re­main com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and we ask the pub­lic and me­dia to re­spect the process as we work to un­der­stand ex­act­ly what oc­curred,” he said.

Gue­var­ro al­so ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Charles’ fam­i­ly and col­leagues. He said the killing is a “deeply painful mo­ment for law en­force­ment, and we are unit­ed in grief.”

At­tor­neys Stef­fon Boodooram and Nala Poodan, who are rep­re­sent­ing the oth­er of­fi­cer in­volved, said their client was an up­stand­ing and ded­i­cat­ed mem­ber of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. The at­tor­neys said the of­fi­cer is cur­rent­ly in cus­tody as a pro­ce­dur­al mat­ter pend­ing the out­come of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Charles’ moth­er called on Al­lah to give her strength to bury her child and for her grand­daugh­ter and daugh­ter-in-law. She added that her son was al­ways a good boy.

“All I could say in this sit­u­a­tion is that we know we have a God. My God is mighty Al­lah. He knows best. He knows the whole truth and every­thing.”