LATT questions Guevarro’s decision not to suspend officers

Chester Sam­bra­no

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has ex­pressed con­cern over Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro’s de­ci­sion not to sus­pend of­fi­cers in­volved in the fa­tal shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo, a Val­sayn res­i­dent, in St Au­gus­tine. The in­ci­dent al­so left an­oth­er per­son maimed fol­low­ing a po­lice chase.

The Com­mis­sion­er re­port­ed­ly said he re­viewed footage cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia and found no rea­son to place the of­fi­cers on sus­pen­sion. LATT said it could not con­firm which footage the Com­mis­sion­er viewed but not­ed that the footage it re­viewed ap­peared to show po­lice fir­ing on the oc­cu­pants of a ve­hi­cle that had crashed, with one oc­cu­pant ap­pear­ing to at­tempt sur­ren­der. Nei­ther of the oc­cu­pants seemed to be fir­ing at the of­fi­cers.

LATT em­pha­sised that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crim­i­nal law ap­plies equal­ly to law en­force­ment and civil­ians. The use of dead­ly force may be jus­ti­fied as self-de­fence if pro­por­tion­ate, but re­tal­i­a­tion af­ter a threat has passed is not pro­tect­ed un­der the law.

The Com­mis­sion­er had al­so ref­er­enced an ex­change of gun­fire be­tween po­lice and the ve­hi­cle’s oc­cu­pants. LATT said it had not seen footage sup­port­ing such an ex­change, which could sug­gest provo­ca­tion, a par­tial de­fence that may re­duce a mur­der con­vic­tion to manslaugh­ter.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) has voiced full sup­port for Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro’s de­ci­sion not to sus­pend the of­fi­cers in­volved in the shoot­ing.