Joseph: No police death squad in TT

NATIONAL SECURITY Minister Martin Joseph yesterday declared, “There is no death squad existing in the Police Service and no such arrangement will ever be tolerated in this country.” Speaking during the Budget debate in the Senate, Joseph disclosed he had been approached recently by some prominent citizens who suggested that, “We should be putting things in place to take some people out. “I told them that we cannot even think about that. I told them that there is a country right now (Guyana) which is being scrutinised for allegedly being engaged in such action. I said we are going to deal with crime and criminal activity in this country in which, at the end of the day, we will be able to hold our head high,” the minister declared. Revealing that 21 persons were killed by police officers during the course of this year, and that the investigations were incomplete in some cases, Joseph said last week’s killing of 17-year-old Sherman Monsegue was receiving special priority.

“The witnesses to the shooting are to be interviewed today with a view to obtaining a written statement. Senior police officers are meeting with the family and other interested parties to get some additional information concerning the matter,” he said. Joseph supported Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s position that, “There is no way that this Government or any right thinking person can condone any extra-judicial police killing.” Despite repeated grumbling from the Opposition benches, Joseph insisted, “ We cannot conclude that those killings were extra-judicial. We do not have a death squad operating. One has to take the circumstances on the basis of the necessary evidence, investigations, and whatever course of action needs to be taken, will be taken.”

The minister said while the Police Complaints Authority was the appropriate body to investigate allegations of police killings, the authority was currently plagued with numerous deficiencies. He identified some of these as chronic understaffing, insufficient legal training for police prosecutors and the authority’s inability to hire or keep good investigators. He also noted that these people were treated as outcasts in the Police Service for doing their job. Joseph produced a tentative report to remedy the authority’s ills and disclosed that its strength would be increased by January. With respect to Independent Senator Prof Ramesh Deosaran’s remarks about crime in Trinidad and Tobago being under-reported, Joseph said one could only act on the available data. He said the total number of serious crimes reported for 2002 and 2003 were 10,995 and 11,206 respectively. He then revealed that from January to August, the total had declined to 10,907.

The minister said that while there were increases in certain categories of crime so far this year (murders, narcotics offences and larcenies), there was a decline in crimes such as rape and kidnapping. Focusing on the latter, Joseph said, “Kidnapping increased by 18 percent between 2002 and 2003, but there was a noticeable decrease of some 34 percent in the number of reported kidnappings between 2003 and 2004. That is not by chance. We have put measures in place to deal with kidnapping.” While declining to reveal what those measures were, Joseph said the authorities were showing the criminals that kidnapping was not the lucrative crime they once thought it was.