Relatives uneasy over police presence at Samaroo funeral

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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The aunt of po­lice shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo, Camel­lia Sama­roo, yes­ter­day com­plained about the po­lice pres­ence at his fu­ner­al, say­ing it left her feel­ing un­easy.

Camel­lia Sama­roo said while she un­der­stands that the po­lice have a job to do, they caused her some dis­com­fort see­ing them at the fu­ner­al. This, she said, was com­pound­ed when po­lice of­fi­cers were seen fol­low­ing rel­a­tives from the orig­i­nal lo­ca­tion venue at the St James Cre­ma­to­ri­um to the near­by Mon­segue and Com­pa­ny Fu­ner­al Chapel on Church Street, St James.

Po­lice of­fi­cers at fu­ner­als for in­di­vid­u­als killed by of­fi­cers is a nor­mal oc­cur­rence, but Camel­lia said she felt un­com­fort­able by their pres­ence.

“It’s very painful to see a po­lice of­fi­cer or any po­lice with guns. That is where the prob­lem is. Once they have those guns on their chest and they’re look­ing at you or they’re talk­ing to you rough, it trig­gers some­thing and some­times it feels very scary, for me, I don’t know for any­body else. If they dri­ve be­hind me, I will feel scared,” she said.

She added, “They have their work to do, like I said, and if they do it in the man­ner that they’re sup­posed to, that will bring peace. They have to bring peace in the pub­lic do­main right now. Be­cause there isn’t any­body that is com­fort­able. I feel re­gard­less, it’s a fu­ner­al or not, so­ci­ety on the whole doesn’t look like they feel com­fort­able, whether it’s our tragedy or nor­mal cit­i­zens in the coun­try. They don’t feel com­fort­able.”

The fu­ner­al was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to take place at the St James Cre­ma­to­ri­um but was moved to the oth­er af­ter some is­sues at the orig­i­nal site. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that po­lice of­fi­cers who went to the cre­ma­to­ri­um fol­lowed those who at­tend­ed from the cre­ma­to­ri­um to the fu­ner­al chapel. Out­side the chapel, Guardian Me­dia count­ed at least five marked po­lice ve­hi­cles pass­ing dur­ing the ser­vice, as the me­dia was not al­lowed in­side.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, who was at the ser­vice, said she knew Sama­roo’s moth­er, as she had at­tend­ed church in Ari­ma for years, and days be­fore the fu­ner­al, she met with his fa­ther and promised she would at­tend to sup­port the fam­i­ly.

Re­call­ing what oc­curred dur­ing the ser­vice, Beck­les said those who spoke of Sama­roo re­called his Chris­t­ian faith and en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it, while his fa­ther called for jus­tice not on­ly for his son but al­so for all those killed by po­lice.

“The fa­ther talked about, you know, for so­ci­ety to re­mem­ber him. To (say) thanks that there were cam­eras, so you could have had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see ex­act­ly what tran­spired, be­cause at the end of the day, that is what it is. When a death like that oc­curs, peo­ple want to know what re­al­ly hap­pened be­cause of the cir­cum­stances and what should hap­pen. I made it clear a cou­ple days ago that I en­dorsed the body cam­eras (for po­lice),” Beck­les said.

On Thurs­day, friends of Sama­roo and his part­ner Ka­ia Sealy, who was shot dur­ing the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in St Au­gus­tine on Jan­u­ary 20 and is now paral­ysed from the waist down, staged a protest out­side the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, call­ing for jus­tice and the res­ig­na­tion or re­moval of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

Sealy missed yes­ter­day’s fu­ner­al, as she re­mains hos­pi­talised.

On Wednes­day, Alexan­der called on the pub­lic not to lose trust in the po­lice ser­vice be­cause of the video, which showed Sama­roo be­ing shot af­ter he sur­ren­dered when his car crashed in a drain.

Mean­while, Beck­les says any leg­is­la­tion brought to Par­lia­ment to en­sure bet­ter pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from po­lice of­fi­cers is go­ing to be sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion.

“No so­ci­ety will be com­fort­able when a sit­u­a­tion like this hap­pens if, at the end of the day, we don’t do all that we can to make sure that it doesn’t hap­pen again. You want to en­sure that the po­lice, the vic­tim and every­one gets what is due to them, mean­ing to say that jus­tice is due for every­one. So just as much as you are con­cerned with Joshua, you al­so don’t want to pass judge­ment with­out the ap­pro­pri­ate ev­i­dence.”