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  • 2 years ago

Recent successes by the Police Service have been accompanied with an acknowledgement by the Government that there are some bad apples within the ranks.

The Police Complaints Authority told a Parliament Joint Select Committee of the many complaints, upon investigation, it has referred to the Commissioner of Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions from 2014 to 2022.

Juhel Browne reports.

Transcript
00:00 A proposed increase in the number of police recruits from 300 annually to 1000 as part
00:05 of the government's 2023-2024 budget was the subject of a question by Public Accounts Committee
00:11 Chairman Davindranath Thanku to Police Complaints Authority Director David West.
00:17 Given that the government has just announced the intention of increasing the number of
00:21 police officers and given that we have other organizations now involved in policing effort,
00:27 do you foresee an even greater need to increase funding support to the Police Complaints Authority?
00:37 Mr. Chairman, yes, that will be consistent with the PCA having to supervise more law
00:43 enforcement officers.
00:45 Mr. West told the PAC that the number of complaints to the Civilian Police Oversight Body increased
00:51 from 352 complaints in 2014 to 2015 to 569 complaints in 2021 to 2022.
01:01 For 2021-2022 it is 569 complaints.
01:06 Now, for the period 2022-2023 it's 713 complaints.
01:13 So it's gone up.
01:14 The complaints have gone up because I believe that the public have an easier access to the
01:23 PCA through social media.
01:25 The PAC's Vice Chairman, Jolyne John, sought clarification about some other data during
01:30 the committee's examination of the authority's 2015-2021 audited financial statements.
01:38 Investigation completed for the period October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021.
01:44 So I saw 104, no further action.
01:48 So I mean these complaints I expect, it's a kind of rolling target.
01:52 I don't know if they are resolved in real time.
01:55 So the question is, it's really how many do you have in your database as backlog?
02:00 Director West passed on that question to the PCA's Deputy Director, Michelle Solomon-Baksh,
02:06 who requested to respectfully be allowed to provide that exact data at another time.
02:12 In response to your question as to whether there is a rolling over.
02:18 When we get these complaints, and these complaints usually are between 400 to 500 complaints
02:24 per year, they are managed by six teams under the supervision of the Director and myself.
02:31 The criminal matters that must be brought before court of law before six months, those
02:38 matters have to be dealt with by the authority and by the teams within a short space of time.
02:44 If they go over, the matter doesn't die because we also look at disciplinary offenses and
02:49 we usually deal with those matters within a two-year period.
02:53 The PCA's Deputy Director then spoke about matters that take longer to resolve.
02:58 Those are the complicated, more complex criminal matters such as murders, manslaughter, misbehavior
03:08 in public office, perverting the course of justice, corruption cases by police officers.
03:15 Those historically take long, sometimes a year, sometimes longer than a year, but not
03:21 because of in-house operations.
03:24 It's because we're waiting on material from the Forensic Science Center, from the
03:30 TTPS, and I'm talking about the science-driven data that we rely on.
03:35 PAC member Paula Gopiskun, the Minister of Trade and Industry, acknowledged that explanation.
03:41 But I do think that you would be measuring your efficiency by the number of complaints
03:48 closed.
03:49 Can you give us the figures of complaints closed?
03:52 So for the period 2014 to 2022, 354 matters we referred to the Commissioner of Police
03:58 for the take action, and 93 matters for the same period were sent to the DPP when we recommended
04:04 criminal action against the police officer.
04:08 While the government has raised its concerns about so-called "bad apples" within law
04:12 enforcement, it has also commended the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service on its recent successes
04:17 such as large fines of illegal guns and ammunition.
04:21 Jule Brown, TV6 News.
04:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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