Alexander admits cops facing a ‘hard time’ but urges them to ‘keep the fight’

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Hours be­fore ac­tivists and demon­stra­tors tried to stage a protest in sup­port of po­lice shoot­ing vic­tim Ka­ia Sealy out­side the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der called on po­lice to pre­serve their in­tegri­ty, as he ac­knowl­edged that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was fac­ing sev­er­al chal­lenges in terms of their im­age.

Alexan­der made the re­marks dur­ing his ad­dress at the launch of the TTPS’ Diplo­mat­ic Se­cu­ri­ty Unit, which is aimed at pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty to diplo­mats, high com­mis­sions and em­bassies.

Alexan­der said he ex­pect­ed that of­fi­cers in the unit would dis­play the best qual­i­ty of polic­ing T&T had to of­fer, as he said the safe­ty of cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors alike was a ma­jor pri­or­i­ty of Gov­ern­ment.

Ad­dress­ing of­fi­cers di­rect­ly, he said, “I want to thank all the mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, as we are go­ing through a hard time at this time with re­spect to in­tegri­ty, as per­sons are try­ing to dis­play that your in­tegri­ty is in ques­tion. How­ev­er, keep the fight, con­tin­ue do­ing your du­ties, in­tegri­ty is not for sale ... per­sons were born with that, so they will take it away from you by any means nec­es­sary. Every op­er­a­tion, every pa­trol, every pro­tect­ed life, every se­cure com­mu­ni­ty... it all mat­ters.”

Alexan­der al­so vowed to pro­tect am­bas­sadors and their staff with the high­est stan­dard of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and com­pe­tence in mind.

Guardian Me­dia al­so tried to speak with Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der af­ter his speech but he greet­ed re­porters by wish­ing them a Hap­py In­di­an Ar­rival Day be­fore leav­ing prompt­ly with mem­bers of his se­cu­ri­ty team.

Mean­while, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said he was con­fi­dent the new unit would al­low for more com­pre­hen­sive pro­tec­tion of diplo­mats.

List­ing the roles and func­tions of the Diplo­mat­ic Se­cu­ri­ty Unit, Gue­var­ro said of­fi­cers would be re­quired to re­spond di­rect­ly to demon­stra­tions out­side em­bassies. Al­so in­clud­ed in their man­date will be act­ing as a di­rect li­ai­son be­tween for­eign gov­ern­ments and lo­cal agen­cies, con­duct­ing se­cu­ri­ty checks, pa­trols around em­bassies, high com­mis­sions and con­sulates, rapid re­sponse to emer­gen­cies in­volv­ing diplo­mat­ic staff and premis­es and in­tel­li­gence li­ai­son through the Spe­cial Branch.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the launch, Gue­var­ro said the cre­ation of the unit would not ren­der the role of Spe­cial Branch re­dun­dant, as it would deal ex­clu­sive­ly with is­sues per­tain­ing to the diplo­mat­ic corps.

He al­so said he had met and spo­ken with res­i­dent and re­gion­al am­bas­sadors since as­sum­ing of­fice, but was un­able to dis­close specif­i­cal­ly what se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns were raised, as those meet­ings were held “in con­fi­dence.”

Gue­var­ro was al­so asked about the le­gal no­tice he is­sued re­strict­ing protests out­side cer­tain fa­cil­i­ties, in­sti­tu­tions and min­istries, af­ter it was point­ed out that T&T is not known to be a “law­less so­ci­ety.”

Ac­cord­ing to Le­gal No­tice No. 40 of 2026, peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in pub­lic protests or demon­stra­tions are pro­hib­it­ed from be­ing at, or with­in 500 me­tres of sev­er­al state in­sti­tu­tions and “sen­si­tive” fa­cil­i­ties.

These re­strict­ed ar­eas in­clude the Par­lia­ment and Par­lia­men­tary Com­plex, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Min­istry of De­fence and the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

Al­so in­clud­ed were the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice head­quar­ters, all po­lice sta­tions, the T&T Prison Ser­vice head­quar­ters, all prison fa­cil­i­ties, the T&T De­fence Force head­quar­ters, all mil­i­tary bases, the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T.

The le­gal no­tice was made on May 27, the same day po­lice end­ed a protest near the DPP’s Of­fice, which led to the ar­rest of or­gan­is­er Alyssa Phillip, her moth­er Camille Cares­quero and so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Ja­son De Sil­va.

Gue­var­ro did not re­spond di­rect­ly to whether Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was con­sult­ed on the no­tice, but main­tained that the pro­vi­sions were nec­es­sary in main­tain­ing pub­lic safe­ty and or­der while al­so ob­serv­ing the rights of peo­ple to ex­press them­selves.

He not­ed that while protests were not pro­hib­it­ed, peo­ple seek­ing to stage a demon­stra­tion were still ex­pect­ed to act with­in the law.

“If you are go­ing to protest, if you want to ex­press your­selves, kind­ly do so with what is present in terms of the law and stick with­in the bound­aries of what is stat­ed in the law and the le­gal no­tice,” he said.

Re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism that the TTPS has not been trans­par­ent with cer­tain de­tails about the na­ture of the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing that led to the death of Joshua Sama­roo and the wound­ing of Sealy in Jan­u­ary, Gue­var­ro said he was wary of di­vulging too much in­for­ma­tion, since it could prej­u­dice the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He there­fore urged the pub­lic to be pa­tient and trust in the ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings, as he en­dorsed the in­de­pen­dence of the jus­tice sys­tem to ad­ju­di­cate on mat­ters.

“Oth­er per­sons have de­cid­ed to ex­pose what they have un­cov­ered as what they be­lieve to be the truth and they are caus­ing con­fu­sion and dra­ma and bac­cha­nal be­hav­iour in the pub­lic,” he said.

“And I want to urge the pub­lic to re­main calm. Every­one will get their day in court and it will be ex­pressed be­fore a mag­is­trate, be­fore a judge, be­fore a ju­ry and the whole of Trinidad and To­ba­go will know. So, we want to ex­press the in­de­pen­dence of all the or­gan­i­sa­tions in­volved in terms of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Re­porters tried ask­ing fur­ther ques­tions but Gue­var­ro left short­ly af­ter.