UPDATE: Protesters again converge outside CoP’s office

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side the of­fice of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yet again yes­ter­day, call­ing on him to re­sign or face their in­creas­ing wrath over the po­lice killing of Joshua Sama­roo and wound­ing of his wife Ka­ia Sealey.

Amid calls of “Gue­var­ro must go” and “Alexan­der must go,” or­gan­is­ers Alyssa Philip and Mari­ah Wal­cott vowed to keep the pres­sure on as the call for Gue­var­ro to re­sign con­tin­ues to gain mo­men­tum.

Trem­bling as she ad­dressed re­porters, an out­raged 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.”

Liken­ing Gue­var­ro and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to a fish rot­ting from the head down, she con­tin­ued, “We can­not trust the TTPS at this time. We do not know if that trust will ever be re­gained if Gue­var­ro re­mains in his po­si­tion.”

Say­ing the lines were now blurred to the ex­tent that the pub­lic “could no longer dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the po­lice and the crim­i­nals,” she said, “Both are com­mit­ting mur­der. When the crim­i­nals are caught, they are held ac­count­able, but the po­lice of­fi­cers are pro­tect­ed by those in pow­er and we can­not al­low this to con­tin­ue.”

Di­rect­ing her ire to­wards Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der for his at­tempts to down­play and even dis­miss the pub­lic’s con­cerns, she in­sist­ed, “We are not daft.”

She urged cit­i­zens to come out from be­hind the anonymi­ty of so­cial me­dia and stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those fight­ing to stop the cor­rup­tion and cov­er-ups.

The 24-year-old said she was hes­i­tant to even con­sid­er hav­ing chil­dren at this time, as their fu­ture pro­tec­tion and safe­ty could not be as­sured.

Asked if the or­gan­is­ers held the view that all po­lice of­fi­cers should be paint­ed with the same brush, she re­spond­ed, “Of course not. We do not ab­solute­ly judge the en­tire po­lice ser­vice by the ac­tions of some of­fi­cers.

“Some have even reached out to me, say­ing they stand with us, say­ing what we are do­ing is com­mend­able. But what we are say­ing is that in or­der for evil to tri­umph, all good men have to do is noth­ing. So, if you say noth­ing, if you do noth­ing, you are con­tribut­ing to the prob­lem when you hide and cov­er-up sit­u­a­tions.”

Wal­cott, a moth­er of two, fought back tears as she echoed Philip’s words, say­ing, “The lack of dig­ni­ty and re­spect by the CoP, through his si­lence, is like a slap in the face.”

Up­set and an­gry over the con­se­quences this ex­tra-ju­di­cial killing had brought in­to the lives of Sama­roo wife and their chil­dren, she said, “We are not de­fend­ing the fact of what hap­pened pri­or to that cam­era cap­tur­ing what it cap­tured.

“We are not de­fend­ing the fact that you know what, Joshua may have been evad­ing po­lice for what­ev­er the rea­son is, but from the minute he put his hands out­side of that ve­hi­cle, say­ing I want to pre­serve my life...when it was that they were ap­proach­ing that ve­hi­cle, no in­struc­tions were giv­en for them to come out or put al­lyuh hands up...the car sta­tion­ary, al­lyuh al­ready in­side...you are go­ing to open fire? That in no way rep­re­sents pro­fes­sion­al­ism. That was rage.”

The two women plead­ed with the TTPS to re­turn to em­body­ing their mot­to, “To Pro­tect and Serve with Pride.”

Stand­ing along­side the two, New Wave Move­ment leader Umar Ab­dul­lah said Gue­var­ro had been giv­en the op­tion to re­sign of his own vo­li­tion, which would have been viewed as an “ho­n­ourable and dig­ni­fied” act, adding his con­tin­ued re­fusal had on­ly proven to be vex­ing to an al­ready ag­griev­ed pub­lic.

Ab­dul­lah’s claim that Gue­var­ro would be re­mem­bered as the “worst Com­mis­sion­er T&T ever had,” was ap­plaud­ed by some, while oth­ers nod­ded their heads in agree­ment.

Ab­dul­lah said he was yet to re­ceive a re­sponse from Gue­var­ro to the call for him to re­sign, which was com­mu­ni­cat­ed via a let­ter he de­liv­ered per­son­al­ly to the CoP’s of­fice on Mon­day.

Joshua Phillip said he was moved to join the pro­test­ers, af­ter hear­ing his 14-year-old son, whose dream it had been join the TTPS, say­ing to him, “Dad­dy, I don’t want to be a po­lice of­fi­cer any­more.”

In­di­cat­ing he be­came teary-eyed up­on hear­ing this, he said, “There was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this.”

Re­fer­ring to the in­ci­dent in St Au­gus­tine on Jan­u­ary 20 which claimed Sama­roo’s life, he said, “This could nev­er be right.”

Rel­a­tives of three young men killed by po­lice in Ju­ly 2022 dur­ing an al­leged shoot-out along In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, al­so turned up to sup­port the pro­test­ers. They main­tained the po­lice had again com­mit­ted mur­der.

Ed­i­tor's note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this ar­ti­cle in­cor­rect­ly at­trib­uted com­ments dur­ing the protest to Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah. They were, in fact, com­ments by New Wave Move­ment leader Umar Ab­dul­lah. Our apolo­gies for the er­ror.