Alexander says no plan to restrict police footage

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has ruled out any plan to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion re­strict­ing the pub­lic from shar­ing footage of po­lice-in­volved in­ci­dents.

Re­spond­ing a ques­tion from Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man in the Sen­ate, Alexan­der said: “The an­swer is no. No. Un­der­line the word no.”

“It is not the Gov­ern­ment in­ten­tion to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion pro­hibit­ing, reg­u­lat­ing, or oth­er­wise al­ter­ing the pub­lic’s abil­i­ty to re­lease, share, or pub­lish footage of po­lice-in­volved in­ci­dents,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said it is “strong­ly ad­vised” that such footage be pro­vid­ed first to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to as­sist with in­ves­ti­ga­tions. “This en­sures that ev­i­dence is prop­er­ly se­cured, as­sessed, and pre­served in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished le­gal and pro­ce­dur­al stan­dards,” he said.

In a sup­ple­men­tal ques­tion, Sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings asked whether that ad­vice amount­ed to a man­date. Alexan­der replied: “Mr. Pres­i­dent, strong­ly ad­vised. And I will con­tin­ue to say this. Strong­ly ad­vised. And I sug­gest we un­der­line the word strong­ly ad­vised.”

The ex­change fol­lows com­ments Alexan­der made out­side his con­stituen­cy of­fice af­ter the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo, when he warned that pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of video clips could in­ter­fere with in­ves­ti­ga­tions and shape pub­lic opin­ion based on lim­it­ed footage.

“The po­lice al­so re­spect that there is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place, and we must be cau­tious as to how we put things out in the pub­lic do­main,” Alexan­der said at the time. “You can­not put things out there, get pub­lic opin­ion on on­ly what they saw for two min­utes or a minute and a half, and then draw con­clu­sions.”