DCP Benjamin: ZOSOs or not, cops will do their jobs

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, says even with the de­feat of a bill in­tend­ed to in­tro­duce Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion (ZOSOs) in com­mu­ni­ties across T&T, the po­lice is not dis­cour­aged and will now con­tin­ue reg­u­lar an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions.

The Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment 2026 Bill, which re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, did not re­ceive sup­port from a sin­gle In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor on Tues­day night. The Gov­ern­ment need­ed at least four In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors to sup­port the leg­is­la­tion for its pas­sage. How­ev­er, eight of the nine in­de­pen­dents vot­ed against the bill while one ab­stained.

Re­spond­ing to this de­vel­op­ment dur­ing a po­lice me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to get the leg­is­la­tion passed would not af­fect the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to ful­fill its du­ties.

“The TTPS has al­ways been in­volved in crime pre­ven­tion, crime de­tec­tion and crime con­vic­tion strate­gies. These strate­gies have al­ways been part and par­cel of what we do on a reg­u­lar ba­sis.

“So, there­fore, the bill be­ing passed (or not) does not negate what we do. We have a strate­gic plan, an op­er­a­tional plan,” he said.

Ben­jamin said he was con­fi­dent in the abil­i­ty of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to en­sure the vi­sion of the TTPS was achieved and was op­ti­mistic that 2026 would be one of T&T’s safest years.

Last week, Joshua Sama­roo was shot and killed by po­lice af­ter a high-speed chase which start­ed in Mal­oney and end­ed on Bassie Street, St Au­gus­tine. His com­mon-law wife Ka­ia Phillip was wound­ed in the in­ci­dent.

Se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage of the in­ci­dent, which was cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, ap­peared to show Sama­roo, af­ter he crashed his car, hold­ing both of his hands out of the win­dow to po­lice be­fore he was shot.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro said the of­fi­cers in­volved would not be sus­pend­ed, as there was no ev­i­dence to war­rant such a re­sponse.

When ques­tioned about the sta­tus of the of­fi­cers in­volved yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said he was un­aware of their sta­tus in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) raised con­cerns over Gue­var­ro’s de­ci­sion to keep the of­fi­cers on ac­tive du­ty, not­ing that the law ap­plies to po­lice of­fi­cers as well.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the avail­abil­i­ty of body-worn cam­eras (BWCs) and why the of­fi­cers were not wear­ing them, mean­while, Ben­jamin not­ed that the mat­ter was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed with a “high lev­el of trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”