PM: Police officers should wear body cams

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has en­dorsed the use of body cam­eras by po­lice of­fi­cers in the field, call­ing it a move that will strength­en pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Asked yes­ter­day about last week’s fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in St Au­gus­tine and whether it high­light­ed the need for of­fi­cers to wear body cam­eras, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I agree that the use of body cam­eras will be a pos­i­tive mea­sure to in­crease con­fi­dence in the TTPS.”

Pressed fur­ther, she said, “I pre­fer to wait un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed be­fore mak­ing a com­ment on that spe­cif­ic in­ci­dent.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments came as the fam­i­ly of Joshua Sama­roo launched their own in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent, seek­ing to piece to­geth­er the fi­nal mo­ments that led to his death.

And in a se­ries of voice notes late yes­ter­day, in which he con­firmed cer­tain facts for the first time since the shoot­ing, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said none of the of­fi­cers in­volved had been sus­pend­ed or sent on leave up to late yes­ter­day.

Sama­roo, a 31-year-old fa­ther of two, who lived at Bam­boo Num­ber 1, Val­sayn, with his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, was killed by po­lice at the cor­ner of Bassie Street Ex­ten­sion and Dook­iesingh Street, St Au­gus­tine, on Jan­u­ary 20.

Sealy, 28, was shot mul­ti­ple times and re­mains paral­ysed in hos­pi­tal.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Op­er­a­tions, Suzette Mar­tin vis­it­ed the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, yes­ter­day, to con­duct a wel­fare check on Sealy.

Well-placed sources told Guardian Me­dia, “The fam­i­ly is on the hunt for the truth.”

Mean­while, there are claims that the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing was the re­sult of, “a sting op­er­a­tion gone wrong.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that the sit­u­a­tion be­gan af­ter an al­leged trans­ac­tion be­tween Sama­roo and an un­der­cov­er of­fi­cer at a lo­ca­tion in Mal­oney. Up­on re­al­is­ing the of­fi­cer’s iden­ti­ty, Sama­roo al­leged­ly sped off, lead­ing to a high-speed pur­suit that end­ed in the re­port­ed con­fronta­tion.

While the CoP con­tin­ues to be vil­i­fied by an an­gry pub­lic, Sama­roo’s fam­i­ly is again ap­peal­ing for him to hold the of­fi­cers in­volved to ac­count.

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the griev­ing fam­i­ly yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro con­firmed of­fi­cers from the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit had been dis­patched to meet with the fam­i­ly.

He de­nied the in­ci­dent was an abuse of po­lice pow­er, and more so un­der the ex­ist­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Gue­var­ro stressed in a voice note, “I want to clar­i­fy that the in­ci­dent did not oc­cur be­cause of any State of Emer­gency, or us­ing any emer­gency pow­ers grant­ed to the po­lice un­der the SoE. This was strict­ly rou­tine po­lice func­tions be­ing car­ried out when this in­ci­dent oc­curred.”

For the first time since the shoot­ing, the TTPS broke its si­lence, with the CoP re­veal­ing, “The shoot­ing in­ci­dent fol­lowed a 12-minute ve­hi­cle pur­suit which be­gan in Mal­oney in the North­ern Di­vi­sion North at 12.30 pm and end­ed in St Au­gus­tine in the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion at 12.42 pm.”

Gue­var­ro stat­ed that the vi­ral video cir­cu­lat­ing on­line shows on­ly the fi­nal mo­ments of the pur­suit and “does not re­flect the full scope of the events.”

Hav­ing re­viewed the ev­i­dence thus far, he said, “I find no ba­sis at this time to sus­pend or place any of­fi­cer on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave.”

While coun­selling has been rec­om­mend­ed for the of­fi­cers in­volved, the CoP said “a First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cer has been ap­point­ed to lead the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Gue­var­ro said he was cau­tioned against re­leas­ing fur­ther au­dio record­ings and videos, but he as­sured, “Should any wrong­do­ing be iden­ti­fied up­on com­ple­tion of these in­ves­ti­ga­tions, de­ci­sive and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion will be tak­en.”

The Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) are al­so con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the shoot­ing.

Fam­i­ly al­leges po­lice cov­er-up

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia as he and oth­er rel­a­tives can­vassed the area where the in­ci­dent oc­curred, Christo­pher Sama­roo, the de­ceased’s fa­ther, con­tin­ued to blast the au­thor­i­ties for what he main­tained was bla­tant mur­der.

He ac­cused the po­lice of in­still­ing fear in res­i­dents liv­ing close to where the in­ci­dent oc­curred as part of the “cov­er-up.”

Sama­roo firm­ly be­lieves the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion will not be un­bi­ased, as “the po­lice are in­volved, and if they are in­volved, they will do some cov­er-up.”

Con­firm­ing the fam­i­ly had not been con­tact­ed by the TTPS up to yes­ter­day, he de­scribed their on­go­ing ef­forts to keep them from meet­ing and talk­ing with Sealy at the hos­pi­tal as “to­tal crazi­ness.”

Hum­bled by the out­pour­ing of pub­lic sup­port, Sama­roo said, “This is not for me alone. This is for all the oth­er vic­tims that fell to the bru­tal­i­ty of the po­lice, the rogue po­lice of­fi­cers.

“And if the au­thor­i­ties can­not put a stop to these rogue po­lice of­fi­cers, some­body will, and you wouldn’t like it.”

Say­ing he had been hear­ing the “mum­blings” from the ground, he ad­dressed Gue­var­ro di­rect­ly, “Mr Com­mis­sion­er, I am say­ing it again, get your act to­geth­er be­cause you will have a very, very, very sleep­less night if this thing doesn’t come out to be the truth, noth­ing but the truth, so help me God.”

Urg­ing res­i­dents in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties, who have in­di­cat­ed their will­ing­ness to protest po­lice ac­tions, Sama­roo said, “I don’t want to en­cour­age the pub­lic to block any roads or do noth­ing against the law.”

How­ev­er, he re­it­er­at­ed, “The im­age of the po­lice ser­vice is tar­nished.”

St Paul Street res­i­dents stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty

Ex­press­ing sup­port and stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Sama­roo fam­i­ly as they de­mand an­swers from the au­thor­i­ties, res­i­dents of Clifton Tow­ers at St Paul Street, East Dry Riv­er, are con­cerned that they too could suf­fer a sim­i­lar fate at the hands of the po­lice.

A fe­male res­i­dent who de­clined to have her name pub­lished said, “It is to­tal, to­tal in­jus­tice. That is ex­e­cu­tion style. We need jus­tice. We are call­ing for jus­tice for the fam­i­ly. We are call­ing for the Prime Min­is­ter and for the line min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to come out and give the pub­lic an­swers be­cause this video went world­wide. Had it not been for that video, they would have said any­thing and got away with it.”

Ad­mit­ting the St Paul Street com­mu­ni­ty was al­ready la­belled a hot spot, the woman said, “We go through a lot of po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and in­jus­tice in this com­mu­ni­ty.”

She is fear­ful that “if they can do it in one area, they can do it in any oth­er area.”

She de­scribed the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) as “to­tal op­pres­sion to poor peo­ple.”

“It’s an abuse of pow­er, and we all know where it can lead to. We do not sup­port that law.”

A male res­i­dent shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as he said, “These peo­ple coul­da do their job bet­ter. It look like overkill.”

He said the of­fi­cers could have made a greater ef­fort to ap­pre­hend Sama­roo and Sealy in­stead of open­ing fire on them.

“It look like an as­sas­si­na­tion, or it look like some shot call,” he said, adding, “The pub­lic very dis­grun­tled with that. Af­ter see­ing that, the cry of the poor­er class is that we are very con­cerned about it.”

Crit­i­cal of what he claimed was a non-ex­is­tent crime plan fol­low­ing two con­sec­u­tive SoEs, he said, “We need some clar­i­ty so we go know how to think and move for­ward.”

Call­ing for an ex­pla­na­tion, he said, “We are not against the po­lice. But we don’t just want to ri­ot with­out know­ing what re­al­ly hap­pened.”

PCA probe in­to mat­ter on­go­ing

Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) David West on Sat­ur­day as­sured that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched in­to the fa­tal shoot­ing.

He said, “The au­thor­i­ty has be­gun an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. As with all mat­ters of this na­ture, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be con­duct­ed in­de­pen­dent­ly and in ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act.”

They too added their voice to the calls for body cam­eras for po­lice of­fi­cers.

“The PCA takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­it­er­ate that in­ci­dents such as these un­der­score the im­por­tance of the use of body-worn cam­eras by po­lice of­fi­cers. The Au­thor­i­ty has con­sis­tent­ly and vig­or­ous­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of body-worn cam­eras as a mea­sure to en­hance ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and pub­lic con­fi­dence in polic­ing.”

The PCA has ap­pealed to mem­bers of the pub­lic who may have in­for­ma­tion rel­e­vant to this mat­ter to con­tact them via email at in­[email protected] or by tele­phone at 226-4722.

Min­is­ter on body cams and of­fi­cers’ safe­ty

May 2025: Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der em­pha­sised that while body-worn cam­eras are valu­able for ev­i­dence, trans­paren­cy, and pub­lic trust, his pri­or­i­ty is equip­ping of­fi­cers with bul­let­proof vests first to en­sure their safe­ty. He ac­knowl­edged that some cam­eras are not ful­ly func­tion­al and that on­ly front­line of­fi­cers di­rect­ly en­gag­ing with crim­i­nals cur­rent­ly use them. Alexan­der ar­gued that of­fi­cers need to feel pro­tect­ed be­fore they can ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect the pub­lic, not­ing that once re­sources and sys­tems are prop­er­ly in place—in­clud­ing city-wide pa­trols, mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, and re­vamped emer­gency re­sponse—the po­lice ser­vice will be ful­ly out­fit­ted with both body ar­mour and cam­eras to en­hance safe­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and pub­lic trust.

Oc­to­ber 2025: Alexan­der re­port­ed that just un­der 18 per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cers were equipped with body cam­eras, and that the $24M con­tract for 3,000 cam­eras had been ter­mi­nat­ed. Speak­ing in the Sen­ate, he ex­plained that the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment had award­ed the con­tract in Au­gust 2024 for $24,965,310, but it was can­celled to save mil­lions of dol­lars. Short­ly af­ter, the PCA urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­fo­cus its ef­forts on sourc­ing body-worn cam­eras for of­fi­cers in a bid to en­sure a high­er stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in dai­ly polic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.