Alexander says all evidence in Samaroo case will be released in court of law

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the ev­i­dence the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has in the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo will be pre­sent­ed when the time comes.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to calls that the TTPS should pro­duce all the ev­i­dence it has in the mat­ter so the pub­lic can get a prop­er per­spec­tive on what re­al­ly took place.

Alexan­der said all the ev­i­dence will even­tu­al­ly be re­leased in the court of law.

Asked if he still had con­fi­dence in Gue­var­ro, he said, “Of course.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les does not agree with calls for top cop Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to re­sign over his han­dling of the mat­ter, but she is con­cerned about his han­dling of the of­fi­cers and how trans­par­ent the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is be­ing with the pub­lic.

Al­so speak­ing out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, she said Gue­var­ro must give the pub­lic an as­sur­ance that he’s do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to get to the bot­tom of the mat­ter.

Beck­les said, “I would not say that he should step down, sim­ply be­cause what I be­lieve the com­mis­sion­er should do is en­sure that the con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice is his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to let the pub­lic know, lis­ten, ‘I’m the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, this is what I pro­pose to do. An in­ci­dent has hap­pened that has clear­ly caused a pub­lic out­cry and I want to give you the as­sur­ance as a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, I will do all with­in my pow­er to have the kind of in­ves­ti­ga­tion’. That the trust is­sues that you have from time to time, that he will give the as­sur­ance that this is one case in which he will go, I think, over and above.”

She added, “He hasn’t said it. He has not said that, in my hum­ble view, giv­en the kind of state­ment, be­cause if he had, I be­lieve then some of the protests and the con­cerns may ei­ther be re­duced, and/or peo­ple will be­lieve this is what he’s go­ing to do. So that’s my call.”

She al­so called for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be done, where all ev­i­dence is re­leased at the end of the in­ci­dent.

“This clear­ly is an in­ci­dent that has caused Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans to take a greater look in terms of when ev­i­dence comes, what the po­lice says, and the role that com­mu­ni­ty can play when in­ci­dents like this hap­pen,” Beck­les said.

She al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for body cam­eras for po­lice of­fi­cers.

“The truth is, in most parts of the world where you have these kinds of sce­nar­ios, you have body cam­eras. And in most cas­es, the body cam­eras give ev­i­dence con­trary to some­times what the po­lice says. So, as a coun­try, we un­der­stand that it’s some­thing that is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary.”

Beck­les al­so said she be­lieves, apart from the po­lice, Sama­roo’s fam­i­ly mem­bers should al­so re­ceive coun­selling.

Ef­forts to con­tact Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful, but he pre­vi­ous­ly said he will not step down. How­ev­er, he did con­firm he TTPS Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly.