Police probing video showing officer assaulting woman in Tobago

Stephon Nicholas

Po­lice in To­ba­go are in­ves­ti­gat­ing an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing an of­fi­cer who was record­ed as­sault­ing a woman.

A video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia shows the of­fi­cer pulling the woman’s hair and strik­ing her at least nine times across her face and head as they walked to the side of a house.

The footage has sparked out­rage, with mem­bers of the pub­lic call­ing on the po­lice to act swift­ly to pro­tect the vic­tim.

One man, who said he knew the at­tack­er, dis­tanced him­self, say­ing, “a per­son I once went to school with is the per­son I def­i­nite­ly do not recog­nise to­day.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia to­day, ACP Rishi Singh said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way “to bring some res­o­lu­tion.”

How­ev­er, he said po­lice re­quire co­op­er­a­tion from those in­volved.

“The video, even though it tells some­thing, there are ev­i­den­tial thresh­olds that we are re­quired to source in or­der to ac­tion any process that needs to take place. This de­pends on will­ing­ness of par­ties to be en­gaged, es­pe­cial­ly vic­tims in mat­ters. We are at­tend­ing to it. I just want to give this as­sur­ance.”