Alexander defends police amid fallout over activist’s arrest

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der has de­fend­ed law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, amid grow­ing crit­i­cism over the ar­rest of Alyssa Phillip and her moth­er dur­ing Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad last Fri­day, while con­demn­ing what he de­scribed as ef­forts by some pro­test­ers to de­lib­er­ate­ly pro­voke con­fronta­tions with po­lice.

Alexan­der said yes­ter­day that while he re­mained a strong sup­port­er of free speech, the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy ex­tends be­yond is­sues of free­dom of ex­pres­sion.

“The sit­u­a­tion with this par­tic­u­lar is­sue that is trou­bling is the overt provo­ca­tion of po­lice, in­clud­ing threats against the lives of of­fi­cers, and a will­ing­ness to bolt what is still a po­lice and now a court mat­ter to a gov­ern­ment that has ab­solute­ly no ju­ris­dic­tion or au­thor­i­ty over any po­lice ac­tion what­so­ev­er,” he said.

Phillip and her moth­er Camille Cares­quero were ar­rest­ed by po­lice and lat­er charged with be­ing part of an il­le­gal march and fail­ing to call on par­tic­i­pants to dis­perse, dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour and re­sist­ing ar­rest.

The ar­rests have sparked crit­i­cism from trade unions and ac­tivists, who in­di­cat­ed Phillip was in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the event. The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) is al­so seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on pos­si­ble ac­tion.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der ques­tioned the con­duct of some pro­test­ers in­volved in demon­stra­tions linked to the death of Joshua Sama­roo and the sub­se­quent ar­rest of his girl­friend Ka­ia Sealy.

“Read­ing the signs, lis­ten­ing to the rhetoric, it is dif­fi­cult to get in be­tween this, es­pe­cial­ly un­der­stand­ing all that has al­ready hap­pened. The rea­sons for the protests are not lin­ing up with the ac­tions of some of the pro­test­ers,” he said, adding he be­lieves in­ten­tion­al­ly seek to be ar­rest­ed to at­tract pub­lic at­ten­tion.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing calls for im­prove­ments with­in law en­force­ment, Alexan­der main­tained that threat­en­ing po­lice and en­gag­ing in dis­or­der­ly con­duct were not ap­pro­pri­ate av­enues for achiev­ing re­form.

“The TTPS has a role in so­ci­ety, and while we all want sys­temic im­prove­ments, I do not think ri­ot­ing and threat­en­ing the lives of po­lice of­fi­cers are the way to go about get­ting that, es­pe­cial­ly in an en­vi­ron­ment where both crime and po­lice abuse are sig­nif­i­cant­ly down,” he said.

De­spite at­tempts to reach sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter on the mat­ter, Alexan­der was the on­ly one to weigh in on the de­vel­op­ment up to press time last evening.