TTPS issues advisory on protests near police stations

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has is­sued a pub­lic ad­vi­so­ry re­gard­ing gath­er­ings and protests in the vicin­i­ty of po­lice sta­tions. The re­lease, dat­ed 25 March 2026, em­pha­sis­es that all pub­lic as­sem­blies must com­ply with the law, re­main peace­ful, and avoid ob­struct­ing po­lice op­er­a­tions or threat­en­ing pub­lic safe­ty.

The TTPS did not iden­ti­fy any spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­u­als or groups in­volved in re­cent gath­er­ings. How­ev­er, in re­cent weeks, there have been sev­er­al protests fol­low­ing the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo of St Au­gus­tine and the wound­ing of his wife, Ka­ia Sealy, on 1 Feb­ru­ary.

No­tably, pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side the of­fice of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on 5 Feb­ru­ary, call­ing on him to re­sign or face their in­creas­ing wrath over the Sama­roo shoot­ing. Or­gan­is­ers Alyssa Philip and Mari­ah Wal­cott said they would con­tin­ue press­ing for ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Trem­bling as she ad­dressed re­porters, Philip said, “We are here to de­mand jus­tice for Joshua and Ka­ia, and every­one who has faced po­lice bru­tal­i­ty. We are ask­ing for the CoP to step down af­ter the state­ment he made that did not hold his of­fi­cers ac­count­able.”

The TTPS re­mind­ed the pub­lic that any or­gan­ised march re­quires a per­mit from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, in ac­cor­dance with the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act (Chap 11:02). The ser­vice al­so cau­tioned that gath­er­ings that ob­struct ac­cess to po­lice fa­cil­i­ties, in­ter­fere with op­er­a­tions, or threat­en pub­lic safe­ty may be dis­persed, with po­ten­tial le­gal con­se­quences for par­tic­i­pants.

The ad­vi­so­ry reaf­firmed the TTPS’s com­mit­ment to re­spect­ing cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights while main­tain­ing pub­lic or­der, pro­tect­ing of­fi­cers, and en­sur­ing con­ti­nu­ity of polic­ing ser­vices.