Cop shot on duty laments slow pace of investigation

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Al­most a year has passed since PC Shakala Charles re­cit­ed what he thought was his fi­nal prayer as he bled out on a street in east Port-of-Spain.

The 34-year-old po­lice­man was shot with a round of ri­fle cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion while in the line of du­ty on the night of Ju­ly 22, 2024.

And while he has gained a new ap­pre­ci­a­tion for life and fam­i­ly, Charles says he is dis­ap­point­ed over the slow pace of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent which al­most end­ed his life.

Charles was one of four of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) who were re­spond­ing to a re­port of a shoot­ing on St Paul Street, east Port-of-Spain.

A round of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion pierced Charles’ bul­let­proof vest, dam­ag­ing his right lung as he lost three pints of blood.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Charles—who is still on in­jury leave from the TTPS—said the slug­gish progress of the en­quiry in­to the shoot­ing was dis­heart­en­ing.

Sources con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the bul­let­proof vest worn by Charles at the time of the shoot­ing was still stored at the GEB’s Aranguez head­quar­ters.

A frag­ment of the bul­let was re­cov­ered in the vest and al­so at the Aranguez base and has not been for­ward­ed to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for bal­lis­tic test­ing to date.

Charles who is still de­ter­mined to re­turn to work as a po­lice of­fi­cer, says the ap­par­ent in­ac­tiv­i­ty of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not en­cour­ag­ing to of­fi­cers who risk their lives to pro­tect and serve the pub­lic.

“It wasn’t sent to the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit (SERU) base for test­ing or Foren­sics, no state­ment was tak­en from me what­so­ev­er, so there’s no fol­low up at all with re­gards to this in­ci­dent which hap­pened a year ago.

“This makes me feel de­spon­dent, why would you treat a fel­low of­fi­cer in this way?

“How would the pub­lic trust the TTPS if we don’t care about our own?”

Re­call­ing the night of the in­ci­dent, Charles, says he and his team of of­fi­cers were min­utes away from end­ing their pa­trol and re­turn­ing to base, when they re­ceived a re­port of a shoot­ing in east Port-of-Spain from the wire­less ra­dio in their marked po­lice ve­hi­cle.

Just be­fore the shoot­ing be­gan, some­time around 8.30 pm, Charles said he re­ceived a phone call from his 12-year-old daugh­ter.

Hear­ing her voice he says was one of the clear­est mem­o­ries he has be­fore the chaos un­fold­ed mere me­tres away.

“We were so close at the time, maybe less than 500 me­tres away when we heard the gun­shots

“I turned down the ra­dio and I told the oth­er of­fi­cers, ‘Do you hear that?’

“They said yes so I told them let’s go and check it out.”

Not want­i­ng to give away the el­e­ment of sur­prise, Charles and oth­er of­fi­cers parked their marked po­lice car near the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion ven­tured on­to the street on foot to con­front the gun­men.

Fol­low­ing the sound of gun­shots to the St Paul’s Street apart­ment build­ings, Charles’ evening took a de­cid­ed­ly dan­ger­ous turn when he came face to face with the at­tack­ers.

“As soon as we bend that cor­ner, shots were fir­ing, we re­turned fire and that was when I was shot.

“When I was shot, hon­est­ly I thought I got shot in my right hand, be­cause my whole arm was numb, be­cause that’s the hand that was hold­ing my ri­fle and I told those guys (oth­er of­fi­cers) I was shot.

“Af­ter a few sec­onds I took about two or three steps and I just col­lapsed on the ground and that’s the last thing I re­mem­bered.”

But just be­fore los­ing con­scious­ness, Charles said he had just enough time to say a prayer.

And as his daugh­ter’s voice was the last thing he re­mem­bered, Charles said that if it re­al­ly was his time to die, he could on­ly pray for her well-be­ing.

An un­con­scious Charles was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal by his fel­low of­fi­cers.

Over the next few hours, Charles says he briefly slipped out if con­scious­ness, long enough to no­tice then DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin pray­ing by his bed­side.

The ges­ture while sim­ple, Charles said moved him and was grate­ful for the sup­port ex­tend­ed by Ben­jamin and DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin who re­mained at his bed­side un­til 5 the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

He even­tu­al­ly re­gained con­scious­ness hours lat­er on the morn­ing of Ju­ly 23, sur­round­ed by his fam­i­ly, fi­ancee and col­leagues, who were ec­sta­t­ic that he sur­vived.

But the road to re­cov­ery was any­thing but sim­ple, as he spent the next 19 days ward­ed in the hos­pi­tal’s In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) un­able to move and com­plete­ly re­liant on the help of hos­pi­tal staff.

Last June—a month be­fore Charles was shot—Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed on the avail­abil­i­ty of body ar­mour for po­lice of­fi­cers.

Sev­er­al of­fi­cers in tac­ti­cal po­lice units at the time con­firmed that there was usu­al­ly a short­age of bul­let­proof vests as some of­fi­cers have re­sort­ed to buy­ing body ar­mour from their own pock­ets.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment at the time then DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin not­ed that while the safe­ty of of­fi­cers was a high pri­or­i­ty, the pro­cure­ment of tools and equip­ment for po­lice was bound by “strict le­gal guide­lines” un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act 2015.

Charles ac­knowl­edged that the vest he wore the night of his shoot­ing was not as­signed to him from the po­lice and was bought out of pock­et.

He says he bought the vest af­ter the po­lice-is­sued body ar­mour he was giv­en, was stolen in 2020 and nev­er re­placed, de­spite a re­port be­ing made.

He ad­mits that the vest, which is a Lev­el Three vest, can on­ly of­fer pro­tec­tion against pis­tol and re­volver cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion and would be in­ef­fec­tive against 5.56 and 7.62 rounds used by as­sault ri­fles.

A typ­i­cal Lev­el Three bul­let­proof vest he says costs be­tween $5,000 to $10,000.

He says the trend of of­fi­cers buy­ing their own equip­ment has been on­go­ing for some time, not­ing that while it is ex­pen­sive, giv­en the cost of ef­fec­tive body ar­mour, it was some­times the on­ly op­tion of­fi­cers had.

“A good body ar­mour Lev­el Four or Five is about $10,000 or even more, I heard sto­ries of of­fi­cers spend­ing up to $25,000 (on body ar­mour) al­ready, but they said they don’t mind be­cause it’s a life or death sit­u­a­tion, but it’s still un­fair.

“Why do you want us to go and fight these crim­i­nals in high-risk com­mu­ni­ties who have high-pow­ered ri­fles but are not equip­ping us prop­er­ly?

And while he en­cour­ages all of­fi­cers to buy their own body ar­mour for their own good, he main­tains that he has no ill will against the TTPS as he is still will­ing to re­turn to work once he is well enough to do so.

He said, “As far as work is con­cerned, the TTPS is a good job, but what I’d say is fam­i­ly and self-preser­va­tion is first.

“I know the pub­lic needs more from us, but we are hu­mans as well and we’re not get­ting the equip­ment we need.

“The Po­lice Ser­vice isn’t a bad job, I love the Po­lice Ser­vice, but cer­tain things need to be ad­dressed, but the top pri­or­i­ty is to en­sure prop­er body ar­mour for the of­fi­cers.

“I don’t want an­oth­er of­fi­cer to ex­pe­ri­ence what I went through.”

To date Charles con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence some pain from his wound, in­clud­ing a short­ness of breath at times.

While he con­tin­ues to pri­ori­tise health and fit­ness and en­joys a run, Charles says he can­not push his body as hard as he nor­mal­ly would and can on­ly ad­just to this new phase of his life with the help of his fam­i­ly.