Couple in police traffic stop that went viral charged

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A Diego Mar­tin cou­ple at the cen­tre of body cam­era footage show­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer dis­charg­ing her weapon dur­ing a traf­fic stop has been charged, while se­nior of­fi­cers say an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the shoot­ing re­mains on­go­ing.

In a me­dia re­lease, po­lice said 38-year-old Ka­tri­an­na Re­sende was grant­ed a to­tal of $140,000 bail af­ter be­ing charged with as­sault­ing two po­lice of­fi­cers, dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour, re­sist­ing ar­rest, dan­ger­ous dri­ving and care­less dri­ving.

She was grant­ed $80,000 bail for the al­leged as­saults on WPC Hamid and PC Phillips, and a fur­ther $60,000 bail for the re­main­ing of­fences.

Re­sende, who ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Lisa Singh-Phillip, plead­ed not guilty to all charges. Her mat­ter was ad­journed to June 24.

Her hus­band, Manuel, was al­so charged with dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour and ob­scene lan­guage. He ap­peared be­fore an Ari­ma mag­is­trate on Wednes­day and was grant­ed $30,000 bail. His mat­ter was ad­journed to No­vem­ber 30.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Curt Si­mon con­firmed that the mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice state­ment, the of­fi­cer in­volved “in­ad­ver­tent­ly” dis­charged her firearm dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

Po­lice said Ka­tri­an­na Re­sende was in­struct­ed to move from a no-park­ing zone but re­fused. Af­ter start­ing her ve­hi­cle and at­tempt­ing to dri­ve off, she is al­leged to have come in­to con­tact with two of­fi­cers.

The fe­male of­fi­cer re­port­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­enced a burn­ing sen­sa­tion in her right foot and, be­liev­ing her life was in im­mi­nent dan­ger, drew her firearm and point­ed it in a down­ward di­rec­tion.

“In at­tempt­ing to re-hol­ster the firearm, WPC Hamid’s fin­ger in­ad­ver­tent­ly touched the trig­ger and dis­charged one round of am­mu­ni­tion,” the state­ment said.

A near­ly five-minute body-worn cam­era record­ing of the in­ci­dent, dat­ed May 22, shows three of­fi­cers—two men and a woman—in­ter­act­ing with the dri­ver over a traf­fic vi­o­la­tion.

Dur­ing the en­counter, the woman was in­struct­ed to re­verse her ve­hi­cle af­ter be­ing told she was parked in a re­strict­ed area, but in­stead at­tempt­ed to dri­ve off. The fe­male of­fi­cer is seen draw­ing her firearm be­fore re-hol­ster­ing it.

Mo­ments lat­er, a man iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as her hus­band ap­proach­es and en­gages the of­fi­cers. While he is speak­ing with them, a loud ex­plo­sion is heard. He is then seen ques­tion­ing the fe­male of­fi­cer about why the weapon was dis­charged.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, ASP Ish­mael Pitt, said of­fi­cers must re­ceive con­tin­u­ous train­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the de­mands of mod­ern polic­ing.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion has long ad­vo­cat­ed for on­go­ing train­ing rather than in­fre­quent re­fresh­ers.

“We have con­tin­u­ous­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for con­tin­u­ous train­ing for our po­lice of­fi­cers. Hav­ing said that, we hope that prob­a­bly with­in the next fi­nan­cial year, that a spe­cial al­lo­ca­tion will be made for con­tin­u­ous train­ing and not that of­fi­cers are trained once every four or five years or on­ly when they are with­in the acad­e­my,” Pitt said.

He added that polic­ing re­quires sus­tained pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment due to in­creas­ing pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions.

Pitt said the in­ci­dent, like oth­ers of its na­ture, will be ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed to de­ter­mine whether the of­fi­cer’s ac­tions were jus­ti­fied, not­ing that he was not draw­ing con­clu­sions ahead of the in­quiry.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and com­men­ta­tor Gary Grif­fith said the in­ci­dent un­der­mines pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice and raised con­cerns about the use of body-worn cam­eras.

He sug­gest­ed that re­sis­tance with­in parts of the or­gan­i­sa­tion has hin­dered wider adop­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy.

Grif­fith said that while body cam­eras are es­sen­tial for ac­count­abil­i­ty, they must al­so al­low for dis­cre­tion in sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tions such as in­ter­ac­tions in­volv­ing chil­dren or con­fi­den­tial in­for­mants.

He fur­ther crit­i­cised lead­er­ship de­ci­sions re­gard­ing pro­cure­ment and de­ploy­ment of the de­vices.

In re­sponse, ASP Pitt re­ject­ed claims that the Po­lice Ser­vice lead­er­ship is op­posed to body cam­eras, say­ing such as­ser­tions are in­ac­cu­rate.

“To la­bel it as though it’s some­thing that is be­ing open­ly avoid­ed or open­ly dis­count­ed, noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth,” Pitt said.

He ac­knowl­edged that ex­ist­ing body-worn cam­era sys­tems have op­er­a­tional chal­lenges but said steps are be­ing tak­en to ac­quire more suit­able equip­ment for front­line polic­ing.