IPS-English TRINIDAD: Rights Group Condemns Surge in Police Killings
 
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:38:33 -0700

 
Peter Ischyrion

PORT OF SPAIN, Oct 15  (IPS)  - The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service
has unveiled a new motto and logo, with the high command declaring
that the goal of the re-branding process is to boost public trust
and confidence.

But recent incidents, including an apparent shootout with police
in August that left four men dead and killed a 40-year-old mother
of five who was hit by a stray bullet in her bedroom, have left residents
questioning that new trust.

Relatives of the men denied that they were involved in any illegal
activities and have gathered some 5,000 signatures on a petition demanding
an independent inquiry into the officers' actions.

Spokesperson for the families, Kalif Saif, told reporters that the
relatives planned to file a lawsuit after their meeting with President
George Maxwell Richards on the issue provided no meaningful solution.


”It is clear people aggrieved by police get no justice. Police stand
up for police,” Saif said, adding that a call by High Court judge
Herbert Volney for an independent body to investigate police violence
”encapsulates what the country has been saying”. 

Both National Security Minister Martin Joseph and Police Commissioner
Trevor Paul have publicly warned that the full brunt of the law would
be brought upon any police officer found to have used excessive force,
including extrajudicial killings. 

”As I have recently stated, the government has zero-tolerance towards
any behaviour that is ultra vires [outside] the laws of the land,”
Joseph said, adding that in addition to the judicial and legal system,
the officer would also face the disciplinary procedures of the Police
Service. 

”The Ministry of National Security will continue to place its full
support behind the commissioner of police to transform the Police
Service where necessary in order to make it much more effective in
its mandate to protect and serve the people of Trinidad and Tobago,”
Joseph said. 

But critics say these assurances are not enough. The Trinidad-based
Caribbean Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) said last week that it had
been ”counting, with mounting alarm” the number of police killings
of civilians. 

”There are simply too many of them,” said CCHR executive director
Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, a former legislator. Unofficial figures show
that at least 29 people have been killed so far this year, the highest
number in 24 years.

Citing the example of Jamaica, another Caribbean island ”where human
rights groups have been protesting the number of police killings of
civilians”, CCHR warns that in Trinidad and Tobago, there is a ”perceived
pattern of impunity”. 

It said that with the protests becoming ”louder and more strident”
from communities that have been witness to such homicides, it is now
questioning ”the implacable response from the police in which every
internal investigation exonerates the police perpetrators here as
well”. 

”The problem is that the police have to use what is known as due
process,” the group said in a statement. ”They simply cannot arrest
or convict one of their officers for excessive use of force or for
abuse of firearms without evidence, and where do they get their evidence
from? The other officers accompanying those that allegedly shot at
the victims.”

”No civilians dare give evidence for fear of police retaliation,
so the only evidence the Police Enquiry Boards seem to have to depend
on is that of the perpetrators' fellow officers, and does anyone really
think that they are going to blow the whistle on their colleagues?”
the CCHR said. 

Mahabir-Wyatt told reporters that the standard excuse given by the
police, ”which any eight-year-old can recite to you by heart, is that
'the police were fired upon and returned fire during the course of
which the named person was killed'”. 

”Never mind there were no shells to be found from the persons who
allegedly did the firing
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