The in­de­pen­dent over­sight pro­vid­ed by the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) will be cru­cial in the com­ing days and weeks dur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the rapid­ly evolv­ing case in­volv­ing the shoot­ing death of PC Clarence Gilkes.

Al­though the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is spear­head­ing its own in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent on Rich Plain Road, Diego Mar­tin, last Fri­day, the PCA’s well es­tab­lished track record with probes of mat­ters in­volv­ing the con­duct of po­lice of­fi­cers could bring some clar­i­ty and, in time, clo­sure in this case.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant be­cause of the many con­flict­ing ver­sions cit­i­zens have heard of what tran­spired af­ter West­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers went in­to that com­mu­ni­ty. Even their rea­sons for be­ing there are not clear and the sit­u­a­tion is fur­ther cloud­ed by var­i­ous ac­counts shared in the af­ter­math of the shoot­ing, when of­fi­cers were re­port­ed to be search­ing the hills be­tween Diego Mar­tin and Ch­aguara­mas for sus­pects armed with high-pow­ered weapons.

Some­how, ini­tial re­ports of three sus­pects be­ing sought were soon whit­tled down to one per­son of in­ter­est who, in a mat­ter of days, went from be­ing de­scribed as a sus­pect to a po­ten­tial wit­ness.

One of the un­for­tu­nate as­pects of this case was the pro­nounce­ment made even be­fore foren­sics and bal­lis­tics ev­i­dence could be processed, or an au­top­sy done on the body of the fall­en of­fi­cer. There was a lot of un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed talk about mur­der, high-pow­ered weapons and the hunt for a sus­pect.

How­ev­er, the au­top­sy re­sults made pub­lic on Mon­day re­vealed that PC Gilkes had been shot in the back of his head while he and oth­er of­fi­cers were pur­su­ing a sus­pect, putting a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent spin on the mat­ter.

That is why the role of the David West-led PCA is so im­por­tant in sift­ing through the facts in this mat­ter and de­ter­min­ing what ac­tion is ap­pro­pri­ate.

Res­i­dents of Rich Plain, who claim the of­fi­cer was felled by “friend­ly fire,” have ex­pressed will­ing­ness to co-op­er­ate with the PCA probe but have made no such of­fer for the TTPS in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

This may sug­gest there is greater con­fi­dence in the PCA, which has al­ready re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly 229 re­ports for the year of al­leged crim­i­nal of­fences in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, po­lice cor­rup­tion, se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct and oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters.

The agency is al­ready con­duct­ing some high-pro­file in­ves­ti­ga­tions, in­clud­ing a case in­volv­ing se­nior of­fi­cer Ir­win Hack­shaw. There are al­so the po­lice-in­volved killings of three Mor­vant men in 2020 and the deaths while in po­lice cus­tody of sus­pects Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris in An­drea Bharatt’s kid­nap­ping and mur­der case.

It is im­por­tant, how­ev­er, not to un­der­es­ti­mate the val­ue of those on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions which will now in­clude bal­lis­tic tests on the po­lice of­fi­cers’ guns and the bul­let re­trieved from PC Gilkes’ body. In a mat­ter that has stirred up so many emo­tion­al pub­lic re­spons­es, it is im­por­tant to ar­rive at the truth and jus­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the fam­i­ly of the slain of­fi­cer.

Both in­ves­ti­ga­tions are nec­es­sary but giv­en all that has tran­spired so far, it is the PCA’s in­volve­ment that gives the pub­lic the as­sur­ance of in­de­pen­dence and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty in the process.