JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

With four fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings in less than 24 hours, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says it is as a re­sult of the po­lice go­ing af­ter crim­i­nals.

On Wednes­day af­ter­noon, po­lice killed Sha­keem Nick­ie who, at the time, was in­volved in a chop­ping in­ci­dent at Dan Kel­ly, East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille.

The killing took place some 16 hours af­ter three men were killed by po­lice fol­low­ing their al­leged rob­bery of a gro­cery store.  The men had opened fire on po­lice of­fi­cers while try­ing to make their es­cape.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter says the more po­lice en­gage crim­i­nals, the greater the chances of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

“As the sce­nario un­folds and the po­lice con­front the crim­i­nals, there are go­ing to be more in­ci­dents of con­tact. It's very un­for­tu­nate,” the Min­is­ter said.

He as­sert­ed that law en­force­ment is com­mit­ted to push­ing back against the crim­i­nals.

“Bear in mind that it will all have start­ed with crim­i­nal con­duct, and the Po­lice and the De­fence Force are em­pow­ered un­der our law to push back on the crim­i­nals. One hopes that the crim­i­nals will step back, slow down and take it easy, but if they don’t, law en­force­ment will do what it must,” he said.

Min­is­ter Hinds told Guardian Me­dia he is aware that front­line of­fi­cers are us­ing body cam­eras as ad­vised by the lead­er­ship of the Po­lice Ser­vice and that the cam­eras are be­ing mon­i­tored con­tin­u­ous­ly.