Law Association calls for mandatory bodycams and tighter oversight in ZOSO

SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has called for manda­to­ry body worn cam­eras and stricter over­sight as the Gov­ern­ment moves to roll out Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs).

In a me­dia re­lease on Wednes­day, the As­so­ci­a­tion said its views were not sought be­fore the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill was first read in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day.

LATT raised con­cerns about pro­vi­sions in the Bill that al­low body worn cam­eras to be used “as far as is pos­si­ble hav­ing re­gard to avail­able re­sources”. It warned that the word­ing weak­ens ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“The ex­pe­ri­ence of our mem­bers has been that this has been used as a ready ex­cuse not to use cam­eras,” the As­so­ci­a­tion said.

“Giv­en that the cre­ation of Zones re­sults in the sus­pen­sion of some con­sti­tu­tion­al rights,” LATT not­ed, “we rec­om­mend that it be made com­pul­so­ry that body cam­eras be used or some oth­er record­ing de­vice.”

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion al­so rec­om­mend­ed that po­lice of­fi­cers iden­ti­fy them­selves or pro­vide their reg­i­men­tal num­bers when con­fronting peo­ple sus­pect­ed of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

It fur­ther sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on de­ten­tion pro­vi­sions un­der Sec­tion 18(3) of the Bill, which al­lows a mag­is­trate to or­der a de­tainee to ap­pear be­fore the High Court. The as­so­ci­a­tion ques­tioned how long a sus­pect could re­main in cus­tody af­ter be­ing brought be­fore the court, how long a per­son could be de­tained with­out charges be­ing laid, and whether a sus­pect should be re­leased if there are de­lays in lay­ing charges.

Ques­tions were al­so raised about what would con­sti­tute “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion” for of­fi­cers to tar­get in­di­vid­u­als be­lieved to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties with­in a ZOSO.

As part of its over­sight pro­pos­als, the as­so­ci­a­tion rec­om­mend­ed the in­clu­sion of a new clause re­quir­ing a Stan­dard Search Record. This record, it said, should cap­ture the grounds for sus­pi­cion and con­firm whether a body worn cam­era was ac­ti­vat­ed.

In cas­es where a body cam­era was not used, the as­so­ci­a­tion said of­fi­cers should be re­quired to pro­vide a writ­ten ex­pla­na­tion.