CoP Guevarro under pressure

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Anger and grief erupt­ed yes­ter­day as friends, fam­i­ly, and sup­port­ers de­mand­ed the res­ig­na­tions of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der. The calls fol­lowed a brazen po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in St Au­gus­tine that left Joshua Sama­roo dead and his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, crit­i­cal­ly in­jured and paral­ysed.

Pres­sure on the com­mis­sion­er in­ten­si­fied af­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed last Fri­day that he has no in­ten­tion of step­ping down, de­spite mount­ing pub­lic crit­i­cism over his han­dling of the in­ci­dent.

Yes­ter­day, few­er than 100 pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side Wood­ford Square, op­po­site Par­lia­ment, to call for jus­tice for Sama­roo and Sealy.

Alyssa Phillip, a close friend of Sealy from Bish­op Anstey High School, be­came emo­tion­al as she ad­dressed the crowd.

“We are here to de­mand jus­tice for Joshua and Ka­ia, not on­ly that, but to raise aware­ness to the pub­lic,” Phillip said. “We have to re­mem­ber that this was a sur­ren­der­ing man.”

She al­so called on the Prime Min­is­ter to act.

“If you would like any sem­blance of re­spect and in­tegri­ty to re­main with­in your Gov­ern­ment, call for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to step down and your Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty,” Phillip said

She high­light­ed the long-term im­pact on the fam­i­ly.

“A moth­er is now par­tial­ly paral­ysed. A fa­ther is dead. Two chil­dren now have to spend the rest of their lives with­out their fa­ther,” she said.

She com­pared Sama­roo’s treat­ment with that of oth­er crim­i­nal sus­pects.

“They are mur­der­ers, rapists, child mo­les­ters sit­ting in the jails who would have run from the po­lice for days, weeks, months, even years, and yet still they were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a fair tri­al,” she said.

“Joshua drove from point A to point B, and he was rid­dled with bul­lets. I am plead­ing 19 bul­lets he got, that is not fair at all,” she lament­ed.

Ac­tivist Ja­son De Sil­va al­so ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, crit­i­cis­ing the per­for­mance of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and the po­lice lead­er­ship, and ques­tion­ing of­fi­cial state­ments is­sued in the af­ter­math of Sama­roo’s killing.

De Sil­va said he had seen no mean­ing­ful im­prove­ment in gov­er­nance or ac­count­abil­i­ty since the last gen­er­al elec­tion and ac­cused au­thor­i­ties of pri­ori­tis­ing pub­lic re­la­tions over trans­paren­cy.

“I see no jus­tice. I see no per­for­mance from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry oth­er than op­pres­sion and si­lenc­ing peo­ple,” De Sil­va said. “We see sta­tis­tics placed on boards, but we don’t see per­for­mance on the ground.”

He ac­cused the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice of is­su­ing a pre­ma­ture state­ment de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as a shootout be­fore re­view­ing video footage that lat­er cir­cu­lat­ed pub­licly.

Sama­roo was shot mul­ti­ple times by po­lice on Jan­u­ary 20 while seat­ed in his ve­hi­cle in St Au­gus­tine.

Sealy, who was al­so in the car, sus­tained gun­shot in­juries that left her paral­ysed.

A video of the in­ci­dent went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, spark­ing wide­spread out­rage. The footage shows the car Sama­roo was dri­ving com­ing to a halt on Bassie Street af­ter a high-speed po­lice chase. Sama­roo’s hands ap­pear vis­i­ble out­side the dri­ver’s side win­dow. Mo­ments lat­er, shots were fired in­to the ve­hi­cle. Sama­roo was killed, and Sealy was in­jured.

Joshua Sama­roo’s aunt, Camil­la Williams Sama­roo, said video footage con­tra­dicts of­fi­cial ac­counts.

“When we saw the footage, his two hands were out­side, de­scrib­ing the gun­fire as ‘shots like rain.’”

She ques­tioned po­lice ac­tions fol­low­ing the shoot­ing.

“How could you tell a dead man not to move?” she asked.

Williams Sama­roo said the fam­i­ly was call­ing for jus­tice.

“What is the fam­i­ly call­ing for right now—Jus­tice. Just jus­tice. This can­not go on any­more.”

Nicholas Pereira, whose broth­er Ver­non Charles was killed by po­lice two years ago, al­so ad­dressed the gath­er­ing.

“My fam­i­ly too fell vic­tim to los­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber by po­lice bru­tal­i­ty,” Pereira said.

He al­leged po­lice re­moved sur­veil­lance equip­ment af­ter his broth­er’s death.

“The po­lice re­turned to re­move all cam­era sur­veil­lance, all DVR, so we could not prove that my broth­er was in­deed sur­ren­der­ing,” he said.

Pereira said he had no faith in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and called for manda­to­ry body-worn cam­eras for of­fi­cers.

“Body cams must be im­ple­ment­ed. Every sin­gle of­fi­cer while on du­ty must wear a body cam,” he said.

Ac­tivist Fuad Abu Bakr urged uni­ty across po­lit­i­cal lines and ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in state in­sti­tu­tions.

“You have a man­date from the peo­ple to buy the body cam­eras,” Abu Bakr said.

He called on sup­port­ers of all po­lit­i­cal par­ties, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), to pri­ori­tise what he de­scribed as the peo­ple’s agen­da.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the shoot­ing are con­tin­u­ing. No of­fi­cial find­ings have yet been re­leased.

Ri­ot po­lice de­ployed but then or­dered to stand down

As the protest un­fold­ed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, ri­ot po­lice were briefly de­ployed at Wood­ford Square.

Emo­tions ran high when the Ri­ot Squad ap­peared.

A se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent and an of­fi­cer from the ri­ot squad spoke with so­cial ac­tivist Umar Ab­dul­lah, ad­vis­ing the group to dis­perse as the protest grew loud­er and more heat­ed.

Pro­test­ers ob­ject­ed, main­tain­ing that they were en­gag­ing in a peace­ful demon­stra­tion and ex­er­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of speech and as­sem­bly.

Mo­ments lat­er, the ri­ot squad stood down and with­drew. Pro­test­ers re­mained out­side Wood­ford Square for about half an hour be­fore leav­ing with­out in­ci­dent.

A se­nior of­fi­cer from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion told Guardian Me­dia the ri­ot squad had been de­ployed as a pre­cau­tion in the event the sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed.

Af­ter dis­cus­sions with the or­gan­is­ers, who as­sured the of­fi­cers that the gath­er­ing was peace­ful, the ri­ot squad was in­struct­ed to stand down.

The of­fi­cer said the de­ploy­ment was not in­tend­ed as a show of force or to in­tim­i­date pro­test­ers.

Through­out the protest, po­lice ve­hi­cles were seen cir­cling the area reg­u­lar­ly. Four of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing a se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent, re­mained near­by, mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

One of the or­gan­is­ers, Ar­i­anne Lewes, ques­tioned why of­fi­cers ar­rived in ri­ot gear.

Lewes said po­lice ar­rived short­ly be­fore 3 pm and warned or­gan­is­ers that the sit­u­a­tion “would not end well” if the group did not dis­perse.

“I don’t un­der­stand why they would say that. We were there peace­ful­ly and were not march­ing or ob­struct­ing path­ways, so we didn’t break laws as far as I’m aware. But they told us to leave,” Lewes said.

She said of­fi­cers lat­er left their for­ma­tion and re­turned to their ve­hi­cles, af­ter which pro­test­ers agreed to leave.