Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go po­lice are prob­ing an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing one of their own as­sault­ing a woman.

A video of the in­ci­dent post­ed on so­cial me­dia showed the of­fi­cer pulling a woman’s hair and strik­ing her at least nine times across her face and head as they walked to the side of a house.

The footage has sparked out­rage with mem­bers of the pub­lic call­ing on the po­lice to act swift­ly to pro­tect the vic­tim.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, ACP Rishi Singh said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way “to bring some res­o­lu­tion.”

How­ev­er, he re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the po­lice need par­ties will­ing to give ev­i­dence.

Mean­while, Oni­ka Mars, founder of Women of Sub­stance, a non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing do­mes­tic-vi­o­lence sur­vivors, is urg­ing vic­tims to seek help.

Mars, who al­so claimed to know the sus­pect, said there are many abusers who were once sec­ond-hand vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Stress­ing that she was not mak­ing ex­cus­es, Mars said so­ci­ety needs to ad­dress the root cause of the vi­o­lence in­stead of re­act­ing to it.

She said an in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed to en­sure vic­tims do not them­selves be­come abusers.

“The trau­ma was al­ways there. It was nev­er ad­dressed, and now it is show­ing up.”