Griffith: Police must justify charges against Kaia Sealy

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

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For­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is call­ing on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to jus­ti­fy the de­ci­sion to charge the girl­friend of de­ceased shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo, warn­ing that pub­lic con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment has al­ready been se­vere­ly dam­aged.

And the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty has re­it­er­at­ed its call for po­lice of­fi­cers to wear body cam­eras on du­ty.

Yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice an­nounced that, act­ing on the ad­vice of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, in­ves­ti­ga­tors had ob­tained war­rants for Ka­ia Sealy’s ar­rest in con­nec­tion with the Jan­u­ary 20 in­ci­dent.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice state­ment, Sealy is want­ed for three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm against po­lice of­fi­cers and for manslaugh­ter, al­leg­ing that Sealy un­law­ful­ly killed Sama­roo dur­ing the in­ci­dent, along with sev­er­al oth­er re­lat­ed of­fences. The TTPS said the war­rants have not yet been ex­e­cut­ed.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the po­lice must pro­vide a “very good rea­son” for the charges laid against Ka­ia Sealy, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the pub­lic scruti­ny sur­round­ing the Jan­u­ary 20 po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in St Au­gus­tine.

“Well, un­for­tu­nate­ly, at this time, even be­fore that po­lice state­ment, pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice has been at an all-time low, even though cer­tain per­sons con­tin­ue to blow a trum­pet to state that crime has been de­clin­ing,” Grif­fith said.

He not­ed that the pub­lic had de­mand­ed ac­count­abil­i­ty af­ter video footage cir­cu­lat­ed on­line, ap­pear­ing to show po­lice of­fi­cers fir­ing mul­ti­ple shots at the ve­hi­cle while the oc­cu­pants had their hands raised.

“Every sin­gle per­son would have known and seen po­lice of­fi­cers rid­dling a car like a strain­er whilst the in­di­vid­u­als had their hands in the air, sur­ren­der­ing,” Grif­fith stat­ed.

The for­mer top cop al­so crit­i­cised the re­sponse of cur­rent Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, claim­ing he had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed there was no rea­son for ac­tion to be tak­en against the of­fi­cers in­volved. Grif­fith ar­gued that the per­ceived lack of ac­tion by the po­lice lead­er­ship fur­ther erod­ed pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ser­vice.

Grif­fith said while he did not want to jeop­ar­dise any on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the po­lice now have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to clear­ly ex­plain the ba­sis for the charges against Sealy.

“If it is that now the girl­friend has al­so been charged, again, the po­lice, I would not want to see any­thing and jeop­ar­dise an in­ves­ti­ga­tion whilst the mat­ter, again, it can very well go be­fore the courts, but the po­lice must give very good rea­son to jus­ti­fy this charge, and hope­ful­ly, I hope that they do,” he said.

Mean­while, in a me­dia re­lease last night, the PCA said in­ci­dents of this na­ture con­tin­ue to high­light the im­por­tance of body-worn cam­eras for po­lice of­fi­cers, adding that such de­vices can pro­vide an ob­jec­tive record of events and help re­duce dis­crep­an­cies and spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing in­ci­dents.

The PCA said de­spite the ab­sence of body-worn cam­era footage in this case, in­ves­ti­ga­tors are con­tin­u­ing to ex­am­ine oth­er ev­i­dence col­lect­ed dur­ing the probe to gain greater clar­i­ty on the se­quence of events.