Family of man killed by police wants CoP to step aside from probe

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

The lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­ly of po­lice shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo says they be­lieve Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro should step aside as the probe in­to the mat­ter is car­ried out. They say this is be­cause they do not be­lieve he will be neu­tral giv­en his ear­ly com­ments on the in­ci­dent in de­fence of the of­fi­cers in­volved.

“The com­mis­sion­er came out with brava­do and de­fend­ed his of­fi­cers at a stage when the facts were still un­fold­ing,” at­tor­ney CJ Williams said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fices.

“Even the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has in­di­cat­ed this may have been the wrong ap­proach. To the or­di­nary cit­i­zen, that pos­ture cre­ates a rea­son­able per­cep­tion of bias.”

He added that the CoP’s state­ments and ad­min­is­tra­tive de­ci­sions must be ex­am­ined to de­ter­mine whether he should re­main at the helm while the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was be­ing con­duct­ed.

“This is about pre­serv­ing the in­tegri­ty of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. We have to ask whether his ac­tions meet the thresh­old for him to step aside at this stage. That is not a rad­i­cal po­si­tion.”

Williams sug­gest­ed that in­creased over­sight by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion may now al­so be nec­es­sary.

“What­ev­er mech­a­nisms we have re­lied on be­fore have failed us,” he said.

“The ques­tion is whether this will be an­oth­er po­lice shoot­ing that fades away or whether this coun­try fi­nal­ly de­cides to do some­thing dif­fer­ent.”

The call came amid grow­ing pub­lic scruti­ny of the fa­tal po­lice en­counter on Jan­u­ary 20, which oc­curred dur­ing a high-speed po­lice chase and left Sama­roo dead and Sealy in­jured. Cir­cu­lat­ing videos of Sama­roo’s fi­nal mo­ments have fu­elled na­tion­al de­bate over po­lice con­duct, ac­count­abil­i­ty and the han­dling of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings.

He said the case high­lights struc­tur­al weak­ness­es in how such in­ci­dents are in­ves­ti­gat­ed in T&T.

“Joshua Sama­roo’s sit­u­a­tion is no longer just a fam­i­ly mat­ter—it has be­come a pub­lic de­bate. We are see­ing a quan­tum dis­as­ter in terms of pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment, the line min­is­ter, and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.”

Williams con­firmed his le­gal team has writ­ten to Gue­var­ro, un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, seek­ing doc­u­ments and in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the shoot­ing.

“The ques­tions we raised are very broad-based, but based on his­to­ry, we ex­pect to be told this is an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion and there­fore the in­for­ma­tion will be de­nied. Fam­i­lies are of­ten left in the dark while the sys­tem in­ves­ti­gates it­self.”

He al­so crit­i­cised the in­ves­tiga­tive frame­work an­nounced by the com­mis­sion­er, which in­volves a se­nior di­vi­sion­al of­fi­cer, the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau, and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty.

“When you look at their track record, both col­lec­tive­ly and in­de­pen­dent­ly, you have to ask what will be dif­fer­ent this time. There is no pit here. There is no fire­wall,” he said.

While he de­clined to com­ment di­rect­ly on the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Williams ex­pressed cau­tious op­ti­mism about the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice’s role, adding that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form may be re­quired to ad­dress po­lice-in­volved killings.

“There has to be se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion about con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form re­gard­ing po­lice killings in Trinidad and To­ba­go. With­out that, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the TTPS will con­tin­ue to erode,” he said.

He al­so urged the Prime Min­is­ter and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to treat the case as a defin­ing na­tion­al mo­ment.

“This should be a test case to re­move the neg­a­tive im­pact on the Po­lice Ser­vice that con­tin­ues to re­duce pub­lic trust and un­der­mine any se­cu­ri­ty plan the Gov­ern­ment wants to im­ple­ment,” Williams said.

Mean­while, the fam­i­ly al­so re­vealed that Ka­ia Sealy, Sama­roo’s com­mon-law wife, was rushed back to med­ical care yes­ter­day, af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties.

Sama­roo’s fa­ther, Christo­pher Sama­roo, said his daugh­ter-in-law had ini­tial­ly been dis­charged but was lat­er ad­mit­ted to a pri­vate med­ical fa­cil­i­ty af­ter her con­di­tion wors­ened.

“She was dis­charged, but a lit­tle while ago she was rushed back to med­ical per­son­nel be­cause she was hav­ing prob­lems breath­ing,” Sama­roo said.

“That’s the last I heard. I don’t know how she is right now.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vish Ma­haraj but his phone was switched off.