Jensen La Vende

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has warned crim­i­nals not to en­gage po­lice of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), as there is an in­creased pos­si­bil­i­ty of a fa­tal out­come.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day night at the screen­ing of a short film on hu­man traf­fick­ing, Hinds point­ed out that the four fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings this week oc­curred af­ter sus­pects en­gaged the of­fi­cers.

“As the sce­nario un­folds and the po­lice con­front the crim­i­nals, there are great­ly more in­ci­dents of con­tact. It’s very un­for­tu­nate but bear in mind that all have start­ed with crim­i­nal con­duct and the po­lice and the De­fence Force are em­pow­ered un­der our law to push back on the crim­i­nals,” Hinds said.

“So that’s what you’re see­ing there. It’s very un­for­tu­nate, but one hopes that the crim­i­nals will step back, slow down, take it easy. If they don’t, law en­force­ment is equal­ly com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue to come for­ward.”

Be­tween Tues­day night and Wednes­day af­ter­noon, po­lice killed four men. In the first in­ci­dent, three men were killed af­ter they al­leged­ly robbed Da Hua Gro­cery in Long­denville. Some 16 hours lat­er, Sha­keem Nick­ie was killed af­ter he re­fused to obey a po­lice com­mand to put down his weapon af­ter he was caught chop­ping a man at Dan Kel­ly, East­ern Quar­ry Laven­tille.

Fol­low­ing these in­ci­dents, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) re­newed calls for of­fi­cers to use body cam­eras, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the SoE in ef­fect.

PCA di­rec­tor David West called on of­fi­cers to ad­here to the de­part­men­tal or­der man­dat­ing they use the cam­eras, as fail­ing to do so will re­sult in dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion. He said the pro­tec­tion af­ford­ed to po­lice and civil­ians should mo­ti­vate of­fi­cers to use the tech­nol­o­gy.

At a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing last Feb­ru­ary, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said po­lice of­fi­cers were not wear­ing their body cam­eras, al­though 1,120 de­vices had been is­sued to front-line of­fi­cers.

How­ev­er, Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion ASP Gideon Dick­son yes­ter­day said while there are some body cam­eras avail­able, the num­ber of of­fi­cers now on the front­line be­cause of the SoE far ex­ceeds the num­ber of avail­able cam­eras.

“If you call out all our staff to work in the SoE and were hav­ing so much op­er­a­tions per day, it dif­fi­cult to have the lim­it­ed re­sources go straight around and they don’t know what they are re­spond­ing to from time to time. The call for the body-worn cam­eras, though war­rant­ed, we can’t do more than what we can do with what we have,” he said.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said body cam­eras are not guar­an­teed to change po­lice be­hav­iour. He con­ced­ed the SoE could re­sult in an in­crease in po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings, but added, “The SoE does not give the po­lice wider pow­ers to shoot peo­ple”

Seep­er­sad said the four po­lice shoot­ings this week should not be looked at as an in­crease in fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings.

Com­ment­ing on the use of body cam­eras, Seep­er­sad said it could change an of­fi­cer’s be­hav­iour but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for the bet­ter.

“Hav­ing some­thing on the per­son of a po­lice of­fi­cer re­al­ly can change their be­hav­iour, you know, in ways which un­for­tu­nate­ly could al­so make them less ef­fec­tive,” he said.

Prison of­fi­cers aren’t to be in­tim­i­dat­ed

Hinds al­so de­scribed shoot­ing at­tacks on the homes of three prison of­fi­cers as at­tempts to in­tim­i­date law en­force­ment. He said state agen­cies are equipped to pro­tect not on­ly them­selves but the pop­u­la­tion.

“It’s just an ex­pres­sion of crim­i­nal­i­ty again, try­ing to in­tim­i­date law en­force­ment and pro­tec­tive ser­vices per­son­nel. These are the peo­ple who are man­dat­ed un­der law to pro­tect the so­ci­ety from crim­i­nals. It is not new,” Hinds said.

“It is not strange that crim­i­nals will take on law en­force­ment but law en­force­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go is trained, sup­port­ed by the law and the Con­sti­tu­tion, and equipped to deal with that on be­half of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in de­fence of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and where ap­plic­a­ble, de­fend it­self.”

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion sec­re­tary gen­er­al Lester Lo­gie has said boun­ties rang­ing from $200,000-$350,000 have been of­fered on of­fi­cers’ lives.

of­fi­cers.

“We are fac­ing a new breed of pris­on­er,” Lo­gie said, not­ing that in the past con­fis­cat­ing con­tra­band from in­mates did not end in the deaths of of­fi­cers.