Families of five 2018 police killing victims from Laventille get $4 million

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

Al­most eight years af­ter five men were shot dead by po­lice near their Laven­tille homes, the State has been or­dered to pay their fam­i­lies more than $4 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

In a re­cent judg­ment, High Court Judge Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar award­ed dam­ages to the fam­i­lies of Mechack Dou­glas, Sha­keem Fran­cois, Shaun­dell St Clair, Nicholas Bark­er and Kudiem Phillip, up­hold­ing claims for as­sault and bat­tery and mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The fam­i­lies claimed that on Oc­to­ber 25, 2018, Dou­glas, 22, was lim­ing, lis­ten­ing to mu­sic and play­ing cards with friends be­hind a home at Up­per Whar­ton Street, Trou Macaque Road, Laven­tille, when of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) en­tered the prop­er­ty, taunt­ed him and shot him in the chest.

St Clair, 19, tried to run but an of­fi­cer caught him, beat him with a gun and shot him.

Fran­cois, Bark­er and Phillip, aged 15, 23 and 17, were al­so shot and killed. An­oth­er man, Williams, es­caped and hid.

In its de­fence, the State claimed the men fired at of­fi­cers and died in a shoot-out.

The fam­i­lies’ at­tor­neys, led by Lee Mer­ry, SC, pur­sued as­sault and bat­tery and mis­fea­sance claims in­stead of wrong­ful death, ar­gu­ing the killings were in­ten­tion­al, not neg­li­gent.

Jus­tice Ay­ers-Cae­sar ac­cept­ed that po­si­tion, find­ing the of­fi­cers’ ver­sion of events was not cred­i­ble based on the ev­i­dence.

She point­ed to au­top­sies which showed Dou­glas and St Clair were shot in the chest at close range.

She al­so ques­tioned the firearms po­lice said they re­cov­ered from the men, say­ing they ap­peared un­used.

"It is pass­ing strange that nei­ther weapon had a trace amount of blood, dirt, or any ap­pear­ance as if they had been used at all," she said.

She al­so crit­i­cised the lack of foren­sic ev­i­dence to sup­port the po­lice ac­count.

"Giv­en the over­abun­dance of in­con­sis­ten­cies in the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed on be­half of the De­fen­dants, the Court holds the po­si­tion that on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties the Claimants have pro­duced a more plau­si­ble and prob­a­ble ex­pla­na­tion for the un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent which oc­curred on the date in ques­tion," she said.

Jus­tice Ay­ers-Cae­sar al­so raised con­cerns about the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"The in­ad­e­qua­cy of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the part of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to take any steps to prop­er­ly and thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter can on­ly lead one to con­clude that there may have been at­tempts to cov­er up what ac­tu­al­ly took place on the night in Oc­to­ber 2018."

She found the of­fi­cers li­able for mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice.

"The unau­tho­rised killing of the men on the date in ques­tion, cou­pled with the in­cred­u­lous de­fence which they have put for­ward, clear­ly shows that the par­ty of of­fi­cers act­ed in bad faith and with reck­less in­dif­fer­ence as to the il­le­gal­i­ty of their ac­tions and the po­ten­tial harm to these young peo­ple," she said.

Jus­tice Ay­ers-Cae­sar award­ed $125,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages for as­sault and bat­tery and $75,000 for mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice, along with ad­di­tion­al ag­gra­vat­ed and vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages to re­flect the court’s con­dem­na­tion of the of­fi­cers’ con­duct.

The fam­i­lies were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ajesh Sumes­sar. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ste­fan Jaikaran and Ja­nine Joseph.