Alexander on probe into police killing

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has re­ject­ed claims of a cov­er-up as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the po­lice killing of Joshua Sama­roo and shoot­ing of his com­mon-law wife Ka­ia Sealy, say­ing au­thor­i­ties must be al­lowed to com­plete their work and “let the chips fall where they may.”

Alexan­der made the com­ment yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to sus­tained pub­lic anger fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 20 in­ci­dent, which has fu­elled re­newed dis­trust in the po­lice ser­vice and prompt­ed calls for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to step down and ac­count­abil­i­ty at the high­est lev­els in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress me­dia brief­ing at its Ch­agua­nas head­quar­ters, Alexan­der said Gue­var­ro has giv­en a time­line for the com­ple­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and con­firmed once the file is fi­nalised, it will like­ly be sub­mit­ted to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP). Gov­ern­ment, he added, will abide by what­ev­er de­ci­sion is tak­en.

“This Gov­ern­ment is not here to cov­er up any­thing done by any agency, es­pe­cial­ly un­der my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. We are here to en­sure that law and or­der and jus­tice must fall where it’s sup­posed to. And not de­signed by per­sons to en­cour­age it,” he said.

“Hav­ing said that, we, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as soon as the file with re­spect to that in­for­ma­tion is fin­ished, I know it will be sent to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty—most of the time, not all the time—the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion. And he would make a de­ci­sion that this Gov­ern­ment will stand by. And the chips will fall where it may.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that emo­tions re­main raw, Alexan­der cau­tioned against a com­plete loss of con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment, urg­ing the pub­lic not to judge the en­tire ser­vice based on a sin­gle in­ci­dent.

“I don’t want to talk too much about a mat­ter that is en­gag­ing the type of at­ten­tion that we are see­ing now. How­ev­er, po­lice of­fi­cers are trained to de-es­ca­late a sit­u­a­tion. And what we are ask­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to do, es­pe­cial­ly in that par­tic­u­lar area, is don’t cast all po­lice of­fi­cers with the same brush.”

He al­so re­vis­it­ed con­tro­ver­sial re­marks he made on Jan­u­ary 28 re­gard­ing the cir­cu­la­tion of videos linked to the in­ci­dent, clar­i­fy­ing that his con­cern lies with ac­tions that may in­ter­fere with ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“We re­spect the rule of law. The po­lice al­so re­spects that, lis­ten, there is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place, so we must be cau­tious as to how we put things out in the pub­lic do­main. And look­ing at it from this an­gle, some­thing needs to be done to those who do that in terms of the law. You can­not put things out there, get the pub­lic opin­ion on on­ly what they saw for two min­utes or a minute and a half and then draw a con­clu­sion to it. The time has come for that to change and the per­sons who con­tin­ue to do that, there must be law to treat with that,” he said at that time.

Dou­bling down yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said po­lice of­fi­cers must be al­lowed to car­ry out their du­ties law­ful­ly and warned that so­cial me­dia clips of­ten fail to re­flect the full se­quence of events.

“The po­lice is op­er­at­ing in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner. But you know what the so­cial me­dia does? They take out all the front piece where the man was re­sist­ing first and then show the part where the po­lice try­ing to ex­e­cute on him. Again, we have to be care­ful.”

Asked if he was re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to Sama­roo fol­low­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence, Alexan­der said “No, I was not.”

He stressed that record­ing po­lice of­fi­cers is not be­ing dis­cour­aged, but said le­gal bound­aries are nec­es­sary to pre­vent ob­struc­tion.

“We must put guide­lines and poli­cies in place to treat with that state­ment. I will tell you why — be­cause if you come up to my face while I’m try­ing to ex­e­cute my du­ties and say ‘boy, de man ent do noth­ing and de man ent do noth­ing,’ are you ob­struct­ing me? Are you as­sault­ing me? So, one of the things that they must put in place with re­spect to that is dis­tance and bal­ance.”

On Mon­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue record­ing po­lice in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties, pro­vid­ed it is done law­ful­ly. He made the re­marks while up­hold­ing a wrong­ful ar­rest and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit brought by a Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment of­fi­cer who was charged af­ter at­tempt­ing to record a po­lice of­fi­cer dur­ing a traf­fic stop in 2020.

Alexan­der al­so pushed back yes­ter­day against calls for his res­ig­na­tion and for the dis­missal of Gue­var­ro, say­ing nei­ther will oc­cur.

“I am the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, and I will con­tin­ue to serve my coun­try as long as the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter gives me that port­fo­lio to do so... When the peo­ple call for these things, some­times per­sons are hurt­ing, it’s an emo­tion­al call and all of these things,” he said.

“Ev­i­dence is what the po­lice need to get to bring some­one be­fore a court to be dealt with ac­cord­ing to law. And it’s the courts, the courts that, in fact, ad­ju­di­cate some things and not re­al­ly the court of pub­lic opin­ion.”

Alexan­der said Gov­ern­ment is not shield­ing any­one from scruti­ny but not­ed there is no such thing as ad­min­is­tra­tive leave in the TTPS, which many are call­ing for.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ish­mael Pitt sup­port­ed this po­si­tion, not­ing that while var­i­ous forms of leave ex­ist, “ad­min­is­tra­tive leave” is not for­mal­ly recog­nised.

“I’ve heard the term be­ing bandied about by per­sons who sup­posed to know bet­ter but I can’t say that it ex­ists,” Pitt said.

Both men said when a fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing oc­curs, four sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tions are trig­gered: a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer’s re­view, a probe by the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Homi­cide Bu­reau and over­sight by the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty.

Mean­while, a pe­ti­tion was launched on Change.org yes­ter­day call­ing for Gue­var­ro’s res­ig­na­tion. It had at­tract­ed 47 sig­na­tures up to last evening.

Ef­forts to ob­tain a re­sponse from the top cop were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.