Alexander defends internal police probes amid Samaroo incident

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice should be al­lowed to in­ves­ti­gate its own of­fi­cers, as rel­a­tives and friends of Joshua Sama­roo ex­pressed de­creas­ing trust in the ser­vice.

Speak­ing at an aer­o­bics burnout at his con­stituen­cy of­fice in Tu­na­puna yes­ter­day, Alexan­der, in his usu­al para­ble style of re­spond­ing, ques­tioned why oth­er fra­ter­ni­ties in­ves­ti­gate them­selves, but the po­lice could not.

“If you have a prob­lem with the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, who do you go to? Are they not lawyers? If you’re deal­ing with the doc­tors, who do you go to if you have a prob­lem with the doc­tors? If you’re deal­ing with the teach­ers, who do you go to? I will not even an­swer that ques­tion fur­ther. I hope you un­der­stand where I’m go­ing with this.”

He added, “The po­lice is not trust­ed on­ly when you are not a vic­tim of crime be­cause if we are stand­ing here right now and five men cir­cle us, hear what he would be ask­ing me, ‘Alexan­der, it have any po­lice around here?’ Be­cause you know why, you trust them then. I am not a min­is­ter for the po­lice, you know, be­cause there I came from. I’m a min­is­ter for the peo­ple, but I un­der­stand it from a dif­fer­ent an­gle.”

His re­sponse af­ter ques­tions about the po­lice ser­vice’s abil­i­ty to probe the fa­tal shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo by of­fi­cers on Jan­u­ary 20. Since the in­ci­dent, pro­test­ers have called for the res­ig­na­tion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Alexan­der, ac­cus­ing them of de­fend­ing the of­fi­cers in­volved in the in­ci­dent.

In the past, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty has called for greater leg­isla­tive pow­ers, which in­cludes more than just an over­sight of the po­lice ser­vice.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the head of the PCA, David West, chose not to com­ment.

At Sama­roo’s fu­ner­al on Fri­day, his aunt Camel­lia Sama­roo said she felt un­easy see­ing po­lice of­fi­cers there. She and friends of Sama­roo and his girl­friend, Ka­ia Sealey, who is now paral­ysed fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, held two protests last week and ex­pressed a grow­ing dis­trust for the po­lice.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so added his voice to the dis­sent, say­ing that when he was the top cop, pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly and lat­er dropped af­ter he left of­fice.

Asked about this, Alexan­der said trust in the po­lice ser­vice is more of a team ef­fort than an in­di­vid­ual thing.

“What is present­ly hap­pen­ing is not about that; it’s not about try­ing to see who’s the best com­mis­sion­er and who’s not. It’s about get­ting jus­tice, it’s about get­ting the truth. It is not about who high and who’s low and who’s the best com­mis­sion­er who’s not. It’s about the peo­ple, and that’s what we’re for­get­ting.

“You know we’re talk­ing about I, I, I, I, I. We’re try­ing to build teams, and there’s no I in team.”

He added that he has faith in the in­ves­tiga­tive process and, more so, the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, as there is a trust­ed process in place which he in­tends to main­tain.