Ex-police trainer urges cops: Be mindful of force used

For­mer in­struc­tor at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my and law en­force­ment in­struc­tor, Oluye­mi Mashama, is urg­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to be mind­ful of the ex­tent of force they use to re­spond to threats.

His com­ment comes in the wake of an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing po­lice and a pa­tron af­ter the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day morn­ing.

Af­ter the con­cert, sev­er­al un­hap­py fans threw glass bot­tles at the stage front. In re­spond­ing to the in­ci­dents, of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) were seen con­fronting a man who re­port­ed­ly threw ob­jects, be­fore beat­ing him sev­er­al times with a ba­ton and throw­ing him to the ground, where he was al­so kicked.

The in­ci­dent was record­ed and shared on so­cial me­dia and stirred out­cry with some peo­ple ac­cus­ing the of­fi­cers of us­ing ex­ces­sive force.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Mashama, who served as a train­ing in­struc­tor at the acad­e­my for 13 years, with spe­cial­ty in de­fence and ar­rest tac­tics, said he did not want to say whether the of­fi­cers act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly or not, as the mat­ter was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by po­lice.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that of­fi­cers should be mind­ful that when re­spond­ing to threats, of­fi­cers must en­sure their ac­tions when con­fronting at­tack­ers are pro­por­tion­al to the threat they face.

“In analysing the video, we have to ask our­selves the ques­tions, if the re­sponse of the po­lice of­fi­cers pro­por­tion­al to the re­sponse of the said pa­tron? Was it law­ful? Are they go­ing to be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions whether good or bad and was it nec­es­sary?” he said.

“Keep­ing in mind it was one pa­tron and keep­ing in mind it was sev­en to ten po­lice of­fi­cers ful­ly geared up. Let’s say for ar­gu­ment’s sake the per­son was be­ing as­saultive, then you must have the pres­ence of your fel­low of­fi­cers, com­mu­ni­ca­tion through­out —which the of­fi­cers were do­ing —you must go in­to tac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions in these sit­u­a­tions, then you have op­tions of es­cort tech­niques, phys­i­cal con­trol and then you have me­chan­i­cal con­trol.”

The in­ci­dent was one of sev­er­al sep­a­rate bouts of con­fu­sion where dis­grun­tled con­cert-go­ers ex­pressed their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the non-per­for­mance of sev­er­al head­line acts, in­clud­ing Ja­maican dance­hall star Vy­bz Kar­tel.

Mashama urged the pub­lic and po­lice alike to be mind­ful of their rights.

“I know nor­mal­ly these events would have dif­fer­ent sec­tions of po­lice there for what­ev­er may arise. But I al­ways tell po­lice of­fi­cers that it’s first­ly about self-preser­va­tion and that doesn’t al­ways mean be­ing re­ac­tive and fight­ing peo­ple, it means un­der­stand­ing the law, your rights and what you can and can­not do.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on the mat­ter via email yes­ter­day, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) al­so said it was look­ing in­to the in­ci­dent.

“The footage has drawn the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ty and a pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion has since been ini­ti­at­ed. The PCA is ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and will pro­vide fur­ther in­for­ma­tion or com­ment when deemed ap­pro­pri­ate.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin for com­ment on whether he had re­ceived a re­port in­to the in­ci­dent yet but had not re­ceived a re­sponse up to press time.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so con­demned the of­fi­cers’ re­sponse on so­cial me­dia over the week­end.

In a so­cial me­dia post, he said, “Any­thing like this in a pro­fes­sion­al Po­lice Ser­vice, and these of­fi­cers would be sus­pend­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. How could these men be in a tac­ti­cal unit and not un­der­stand use of force pol­i­cy? If the in­di­vid­ual broke the law, or was a se­ri­ous threat and could not be con­trolled, you don’t go jab­bing and swing­ing ba­tons and kick­ing him as if it is two drunk men fight­ing in a bar.”

Grif­fith sug­gest­ed that to sup­press the pa­tron, the of­fi­cers should have tak­en him to the ground and hand­cuffed him or used pep­per spray.