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« on: January 02, 2015, 05:01:36 PM »
By Sheila Rampersad (Express)
Story Created: Jan 1, 2015 at 7:50 PM ECT
Story Updated: Jan 1, 2015 at 7:50 PM ECT
It is unsurprising that on the cusp of a new year, the long arm of the law is featured descending brutally on a physically vulnerable citizen. It is even less unusual that that long arm is attached to a special reserve police officer.
While deviant behaviour by regular police officers—men and women alike—remain less uncommon than citizens would like, allegations and formal charges against special reserve officers are too many and too frequent. Citizens, ideally in the second instance, and the police service in the first instance, ought not to feel that business as usual is an acceptable response.
The system of recruiting, vetting, training and disciplining SRPs must be urgently reviewed and revised; the public must make it impossible for the TTPS to continue its characteristic sluggishness.
A cursory search for “SRP charged” generates a diverse range of criminal deviance over the past few years:
May 2014: Joel Apparicio, 31, shot and killed by an SRP in San Juan. Apparicio was running along Real Street towards the San Juan Police Station to make a report.
August 2014: SRP Jameel Mohammed of the Biche Police Station charged with misbehaviour in public office. The charge was related to the disappearance of a gun belonging to a police sergeant attached to the same station.
October 2014: SRPs Avinash Hajaree and Jeremy Tenia of the Praedial Larceny Squad charged with assaulting and falsely imprisoning Basraj Tooolsie in Debe.
March 2013: SRPs Kevon Marshall and Kenrol Patterson jointly charged with Mark Collette for the abduction and murder of Johnny Noel.
June 2013: SRP Andy Britto jailed for four months with hard labour for assaulting his neighbour. The court believed that Britto hit his neighbour in the head with a big stone. In this matter, the magistrate seemed spooked by the contents of a probation officer’s report on Britto. She concluded, “You ought not to be in the Police Service. It is a noble profession…” Britto, she noted, had shown no remorse during the trial despite having known the victim all his life. Prior to his arrest, Britto was doing guard duty at Police Administration Building, Port of Spain.
August 2012: SRP Bryan Chadband charged with attempted murder of a close relative.
August 2012: An SRP expected to appear in court charged with robbing several ATMs in Princes Town and possession of ammunition.
June 2011: An SRP expected to appear in court charged with several counts of larceny, corruption and fraud.
November 2011: SRP Rennie Deowah charged with indecently assaulting a six-year-old girl.
September 2010: SRP Summer St Clair of the Transit Unit charged with possession of 107 grammes of marijuana.
This list is selective; an exhaustive compilation would be even scarier.
Average citizens could watch this and see that there is a problem somewhere in the recruitment of SRPs. The instances are too many. In a serious country experts would have noticed this, studied it expansively and submitted recommendations to improve the quality of men and women who, after truncated training, are handed police identification cards, uniforms and guns.
Note that the recent Rapid Response Unit (RRU) comprises SRPs exclusively. Seventy-six of them also populate the Praedial Larceny Squad. Unlike regular officers, SRPs undergo no polygraph and psychometric testing so there are few opportunities to exclude those recruits who may have violent inclinations, who may be paedophiles or suffer from mental illnesses. While they are trained in the mechanics of firearms, they are not trained in a use-of-force policy or restraint in dealing with civilians.
The educational requirements of five O-Levels are also waived.
With far inferior education and less training than a regular police officer, SRPs are thrown in at the deep end, attending to reports just like regular officers. The public makes no distinction between regular officers and SRPs and SRPs are mandated to respond to any incident they witness.
There have never been regulations in place for SRPs; there is no code of conduct. Many people who are rejected as recruits by the TTPS secure employment as SRPs.
The SRP Act speaks to discipline but no process is outlined.
Yet these SRPs, some of whom no doubt perform admirably, are foisted on a citizenry already reeling from the effects of sometimes incompetent, sometimes downright abusive, police behaviour.
There are SRP-only squads, SRPs in almost all police stations, SRPs with guns, SRPs in Tobago, SRPs patrolling our cities over Christmas.
The TTPS cannot allow this to continue; citizens must ensure that the TTPS and the Ministry of National Security conduct a comprehensive review of the process by which SRPs are employed and let loose on an unwitting population.
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