Stakeholders again call for wider use of body cameras

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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Two stake­hold­ers yes­ter­day ques­tioned the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) han­dling of the Joshua Sama­roo case and again called for the full use of body cam­eras by po­lice dur­ing their op­er­a­tional du­ties.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith first clar­i­fied that the sit­u­a­tion was not about Ka­ia Sealy ac­tu­al­ly shoot­ing Sama­roo, but rather her al­leged ac­tion/s which re­port­ed­ly forced the po­lice to re­act as they did and which led to the death of Sama­roo.

Grif­fith said, “This is the al­le­ga­tion that po­lice of­fi­cers were in­volved in armed con­flict with her and she was ac­tu­al­ly fir­ing at po­lice of­fi­cers, and po­lice, in their rea­son to de­fend them­selves, re­turned fire and by Mr Sama­roo be­ing killed, she is now be­ing charged.”

De­fend­ing the char­ac­ter and in­tegri­ty of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, who gave po­lice the or­ders to lay three charges, in­clud­ing manslaugh­ter, against Sealy, Grif­fith in­sist­ed, “What it should not be, is for per­sons to ques­tion the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the DPP.”

Say­ing he had worked with Gas­pard dur­ing his tenures as CoP and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, Grif­fith added, “I can as­sure you the DPP can­not be politi­cised. He is not bi­ased. He can­not be in­flu­enced. How­ev­er, a DPP makes a de­ci­sion based on what is pro­vid­ed to him.”

On the ques­tion of whether the DPP had mis­read the room, he said, “His work is based on the files and the facts. This is what is giv­en to him. He is not a fact-find­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tor. He is al­so not a pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, nor a politi­cian, nor a com­mis­sion­er.”

Grif­fith said Gas­pard’s job was to sift through all the facts placed be­fore him and de­liv­er a di­rec­tive based on that.

Of­fer­ing his per­spec­tive on sev­er­al the­o­ries re­lat­ed to the ac­tu­al shoot­ing now be­ing of­fered in the pub­lic do­main, Grif­fith said, “Ques­tions just need to be an­swered. It is not to say that she in­no­cent or guilty, or vice ver­sa, but in the ab­sence of the CoP not clar­i­fy­ing this, and I fi­nal­ly have to add, to make it worse, the most dan­ger­ous thing is giv­ing an ig­no­rant per­son au­thor­i­ty. We have a sit­u­a­tion where per­sons came for­ward and want­ed to voice their con­cern, their hurt...you go out­side the Po­lice Ad­min Build­ing and you dis­perse them, you scat­ter them with the au­dac­i­ty to say that is based on a threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty?”

How­ev­er, he said ques­tions need­ed to be asked about why there has been si­lence by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) re­gard­ing the de­ci­sion by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro not to utilise the 1,200 body cam­eras that had been pur­chased whilst he was in of­fice.

Grif­fith ar­gued, “It seems like there is a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt not to use these body cam­eras. ... It seems to be a fear of tech­nol­o­gy.”

He al­so de­scribed Gue­var­ro’s re­fusal to sus­pend of­fi­cers when the in­ci­dent oc­curred as the first red flag, not­ing it was in con­trast to in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice. He added that sub­se­quent com­ments about the de­ci­sion were in­dica­tive of a lack of un­der­stand­ing of law en­force­ment pro­ce­dure.

He ac­cused Gue­var­ro of act­ing in an ar­ro­gant man­ner, which he said would not help in re­build­ing pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS.

Call­ing on the PolSC to sus­pend Gue­var­ro based on claims the body cam­eras were non-func­tion­al, which he ar­gued were mis­lead­ing, Grif­fith said both Gue­var­ro and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der were “lack­ing log­ic in 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing.”

“This type of at­ti­tude of po­lice have to pro­tect po­lice, has to stop,” he said.

Hav­ing worked as a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­sor to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her pre­vi­ous term, Grif­fith said, “I can­not think that she would agree that we must de­monise, con­demn, at­tack the me­dia, at­tack those per­sons that went out­side the Po­lice Ad­min Build­ing and you, a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter do­ing that.”

He ques­tioned if these sen­ti­ments were rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Gov­ern­ment’s over­all po­si­tion.

Mean­while, so­cial ac­tivist Dr David Muham­mad, al­so ap­pear­ing on the pro­gramme, ad­mit­ted CoP Gue­var­ro has a tough job be­fore him, in that he of­ten has to strike a bal­ance be­tween demon­strat­ing pub­lic com­pas­sion whilst en­sur­ing the hard­line ap­proach is not lost.

This del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act of­ten rears its head, Muhammed said, as past ex­pe­ri­ence has shown that when the frus­tra­tion and stress of crime moves to the fore, calls are made for “a Ran­dolph Bur­rows type of lead­er­ship with­in the po­lice.”

Say­ing there were too many skele­tons in Bur­rows’ clos­et re­gard­ing his crime- fight­ing ef­forts, Muham­mad ac­knowl­edged that the pub­lic had reached its wits’ end on the crime sit­u­a­tion and that it ap­peared as if they were will­ing to ac­cept “the kind of dra­con­ian, hard­line, even blood­thirsty polic­ing in ex­change for solv­ing the crime prob­lem.”

Weigh­ing in on the shoot­ing death of Sama­roo, which left Sealy in­jured, Muham­mad urged peo­ple not to let col­lec­tive ha­tred per­vade so­ci­ety.

Agree­ing that pub­lic trust and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the TTPS had been called in­to ques­tion in the past, Muham­mad said the wide­spread use of body cam­eras re­mained an es­sen­tial miss­ing com­po­nent of of­fi­cers’ dai­ly op­er­a­tions.

He called for sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing for po­lice of­fi­cers, adding that he did not be­lieve the rev­e­la­tion last week that Sealy would face manslaugh­ter charges was pru­dent at this stage.

“I think it was a mis­cal­cu­la­tion on the part of the State to bring forth this sto­ry, es­pe­cial­ly with the con­fi­dence of not prop­er­ly ex­plain­ing what it is that they saw.”