Heavy police presence at Kaia Sealy protest site

AN­NA LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

A heavy po­lice pres­ence de­scend­ed on Bar­ba­dos Road, Fed­er­a­tion Park on Fri­day af­ter­noon ahead of a planned ‘Jus­tice for Ka­ia Sealy’ protest out­side the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (TTF­SC).

At about 3:25 pm, po­lice of­fi­cers lined the stretch of Bar­ba­dos Road, in­clud­ing the cor­ner of Bar­ba­dos Road and Cir­cu­lar Road, re­strict­ing ac­cess to mem­bers of the pub­lic, sup­port­ers and me­dia per­son­nel gath­er­ing for the sched­uled 3 p.m. protest.

Peo­ple were pushed to the op­po­site side of the street near what is com­mon­ly re­ferred to as the Po­lice Mess, while of­fi­cers blocked any­one from stand­ing on the same side as the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre.

On­ly res­i­dents of the area were be­ing al­lowed through, with po­lice per­mit­ting lim­it­ed ve­hic­u­lar and pedes­tri­an ac­cess.

Of­fi­cers from sev­er­al units were de­ployed to the scene, in­clud­ing the Mount­ed Branch, In­ter-Agency Task Force, Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol, di­vi­sion­al task force of­fi­cers, charge room per­son­nel, as well as uni­formed and plain­clothes po­lice.

One of­fi­cer de­scribed the area as “heav­i­ly po­liced”, say­ing po­lice were “not tak­ing any chances” and would not al­low a re­peat of Wednes­day’s events.

The TTF­SC was not in­clud­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s re­cent­ly an­nounced list of lo­ca­tions des­ig­nat­ed as no-protest or re­strict­ed zones.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, ACP Kurt Si­mon in­di­cat­ed that peo­ple re­mained free to gath­er at lo­ca­tions not list­ed un­der the re­stric­tions, and the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre had not been named among pro­hib­it­ed ar­eas.

It re­mains un­clear whether the list had since been amend­ed to in­clude the fa­cil­i­ty.

A heav­i­ly tint­ed black ve­hi­cle, be­lieved to be car­ry­ing a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial, ar­rived at the lo­ca­tion short­ly be­fore 3:30 pm, but of­fi­cers on the ground did not con­firm who was in­side.

Me­dia per­son­nel at the scene said they had not been al­lowed to in­ter­view any po­lice of­fi­cials.