Opposition slams police handling of Sealy-Samaroo matter

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has ac­cused the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) of fur­ther erod­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem amid con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealy mat­ter.

Speak­ing on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les crit­i­cised Criston J Williams, the at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Sama­roo fam­i­ly, for urg­ing cit­i­zens to “trust the process” de­spite wide­spread pub­lic scruti­ny over the po­lice han­dling of the mat­ter.

He de­scribed Williams’ calls for cit­i­zens to trust the process in the face of wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed CCTV footage as an in­sult to the pop­u­la­tion.

Gon­za­les said he found it “quite cu­ri­ous” that a de­fence at­tor­ney had pub­licly moved to de­fend the ac­tions of the pros­e­cu­tion.

“I am sur­prised that a de­fence at­tor­ney is jump­ing to the de­fence of the pros­e­cu­tion in this mat­ter. It is time that we look deep­er in­to this. I have nev­er seen where a de­fence at­tor­ney all of a sud­den is ex­cit­ed to de­fend the po­lice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).”

He added, “What this de­fence at­tor­ney should be do­ing as an of­fi­cer of the court should be en­cour­ag­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, en­cour­ag­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro) and even en­cour­ag­ing  the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (Roger Gas­pard), all of whom are in pub­lic of­fice, and they are ac­count­able to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, to put at a lev­el, and to put suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion out in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, so that the peo­ple of this coun­try can be­lieve that there is some­thing in­side of there that would war­rant their trust and their con­fi­dence.”

Gon­za­les now be­lieves that the han­dling of the is­sue has pushed the pub­lic trust in the TTPS to be at “its low­est point in decades”.

He al­so launched a scathing at­tack on Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, say­ing the pub­lic could no longer take the min­is­ter se­ri­ous­ly.

He ac­cused Alexan­der of re­peat­ed­ly us­ing par­lia­men­tary stand­ing or­ders to avoid an­swer­ing ques­tions re­lat­ed to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, in­clud­ing ar­rests and charges linked to the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

He fur­ther crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment over the is­sue of po­lice body cam­eras, claim­ing Alexan­der failed to give a com­mit­ment in Par­lia­ment that the Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide body cam­eras for of­fi­cers de­spite re­peat­ed calls from the Op­po­si­tion. 

“Who on earth can take Roger Alexan­der se­ri­ous­ly? I mean, if you want to take him se­ri­ous­ly, the first sen­tence that comes out of his mouth, you can’t take that man se­ri­ous­ly. And for Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to put some­one like Roger Alexan­der to be in charge of our Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, it tells you the mind­set of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar... If you want to re­store con­fi­dence, there are some se­ri­ous changes you need to make to the top there. And the first one must go is Roger Alexan­der.”

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Alexan­der for a re­sponse on the mat­ter, he said Gon­za­les can­not bul­ly him.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les re­newed calls for leg­isla­tive re­form aimed at strength­en­ing po­lice ac­count­abil­i­ty and over­sight.

Beck­les urged Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to amend leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the po­lice com­plaints au­thor­i­ty to give the body stronger in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers, in­clud­ing im­me­di­ate ac­cess to scenes in­volv­ing po­lice killings and greater au­thor­i­ty to pre­serve ev­i­dence.

She al­so re­it­er­at­ed calls for the manda­to­ry use of body cam­eras by po­lice and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies au­tho­rised to use force, ar­gu­ing that such mea­sures are nec­es­sary to im­prove trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and pub­lic trust in polic­ing.

Beck­les said, “It is un­de­ni­able that sus­pi­cion in po­lice ac­tion has tak­en un­nec­es­sary root in the mat­ter of the charges brought against Ka­ia Sealy. The Prime Min­is­ter’s ref­er­ence to peo­ple sleep­ing peace­ably in their beds at night on­ly be­cause rough men stand ready to do vi­o­lence on their be­half are as use­ful as her com­ments to buss heads and kill peo­ple vi­o­lent­ly whilst al­leg­ing crim­i­nal con­duct by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors with­out in­form­ing the po­lice of their iden­ti­ties, sup­pos­ed­ly well known to her.”