Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) head David West says the in­de­pen­dent body has sev­er­al chal­lenges and lim­i­ta­tions, in­clud­ing the re­quest­ed se­ries of amend­ments yet to be ap­proved by the Leg­is­la­tion Re­view Com­mit­tee.

West made the com­ment hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s urged the body to fast track the probe in­to the po­lice killings of three men in Mor­vant last Sat­ur­day, in which he not­ed the PCA’s in­ef­fi­cien­cy in in­ves­ti­gat­ing mat­ters in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers was one of the is­sues af­fect­ing the of peo­ple get­ting jus­tice in some mat­ters.

Row­ley made the com­ment dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence in which he ad­dressed the protests ear­li­er this week sparked the by po­lice killings of Joel Ja­cob, Noel Di­a­mond and Is­rael Clin­ton.

“We have a Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) which has the du­ty to in­ves­ti­gate the ac­tions of po­lice of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly where the out­come has been one of such great sad­ness gen­er­at­ing such anger. But I will be less than hon­est with you if I just tell you leave it to the PCA … be­cause I too, as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced this be­fore, as a cit­i­zen hav­ing seen this be­fore and want­i­ng jus­tice to be done not just for those against whom the al­le­ga­tion would have been made and for those who would have lost mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty or their fam­i­ly, but for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to know that some­thing has gone on here and this is the per­son or peo­ple who are held ac­count­able.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly this has not been our ex­pe­ri­ence that we could just sit back and say ok leave it to the PCA and one day they will churn out a re­sult,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley said the PCA have been not func­tion­ing that way and added that there is an ab­sence of con­fi­dence.

“And that means that when the par­lia­ment thought that they would have dealt with these mat­ters in that way, we still have to wait for that kind of out­come so we have to en­sure that there are prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions that gen­er­ate ev­i­dence. In this sit­u­a­tion, to call for im­me­di­ate ac­tion with­out the ev­i­dence is to call for re­venge as against jus­tice,” Row­ley said.

But in the PCA’s de­fence, West said the body is a crea­ture of statute de­signed specif­i­cal­ly to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­le­ga­tions of both se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct and crim­i­nal of­fences which may in­clude of­fi­cer-in­volved shoot­ings. How­ev­er, he said since 2012 the PCA had re­quest­ed a se­ries of amend­ments de­signed to give them more teeth which are yet to be ap­proved by the Leg­is­la­tion Re­view Com­mit­tee.

“We look for­ward to our con­tin­ued work with that com­mit­tee to fi­nalise these amend­ments which would bet­ter serve the PCA’s and the pub­lic’s in­ter­ests,” West said.

He said in 2016 the PCA host­ed two pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on the pend­ing amend­ments and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al agreed the PCA’s pow­ers were too lim­it­ed.

“In the ab­sence of amend­ed leg­is­la­tion, the PCA has been rel­e­gat­ed to re­ly on oth­er in­sti­tu­tion­al bod­ies, in­clud­ing the TTPS, which as a re­sult, de­lays the course of our in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” he said.

He said the PCA’s re­liance on oth­er bod­ies af­fects their abil­i­ty to com­plete probes ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.

The chal­lenges in­clude de­lays in re­ceiv­ing:

• Crit­i­cal doc­u­ments from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre such as post mortems and cer­tifi­cates of analy­sis;

• TTPS in­ves­tiga­tive files for au­dit­ing pur­pos­es;

• Re­ports from of­fi­cers who dis­charged their firearms or were present dur­ing such dis­charges.”

West said the PCA has sought to rem­e­dy the afore­men­tioned is­sues through dis­cussing a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, “which is yet to ac­cede for­mal­ly to the terms and con­di­tions nec­es­sary to fa­cil­i­tate same.”

West added, “In spite of these chal­lenges, the PCA has made sig­nif­i­cant re­fer­rals to both the Of­fices of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. These achieve­ments have been ac­com­plished through the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of the staff of the PCA who per­form yeo­man ser­vice. While the PCA is statu­to­ri­ly bound by con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, de­tails of re­fer­rals which are dis­clos­able will be re­leased in due course,” he said.