Another promise?

Deputy Police Commissioner Trevor Paul’s promise made on Monday that Sunday morning’s alleged shooting by a police officer of two men at a fete in Chaguaramas would be investigated with a sense of urgency, should not stop there. Instead, Paul’s assurance of a sense of urgency should be extended, however belatedly, to the numerous incidents reportedly involving police officers, whether in the recent or not so recent past, against whom complaints have been made.

And while the Deputy Police Commissioner’s promise is still fresh in his mind, perhaps he could order an investigation into the preferential treatment accorded to policemen and women when they appear in court as defendants for whatever the reason. This includes other police officers providing them with special transport in and out of court buildings; shielding them from press cameras; playing hide and seek with media personnel to prevent them from being photographed, and in all too many cases not placing them in handcuffs as they would other persons charged with similar or not too dissimilar offences.

There should not be preferential treatment for police officers who have been charged with allegedly breaking the law. And while, a police officer, as any other citizen, who is charged before the courts, must be presumed innocent unless proved guilty according to law, any treatment which is good for the proverbial goose must be held as equally good for the gander. We hope that Deputy CoP Paul’s assurance will not turn out to be just another promise of officialdom, although we must admit we shall not be tempted into holding our breath. The questionable protection for fellow police officers has not always begun and ended simply with policemen/women, who have merely been charged, but was very evident a few years ago in the case of a relatively senior officer in South, who although he had been found guilty in a court of law of a serious offence, still qualified for obscenely mindless protection.

When police officers, however well meaning, indulge in such practices they send uncomfortable signals to other citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, that their fellow officers who may have been charged with offences and by extension themselves, are entitled to preferential treatment, because by some mental sleight of hand, they are and must be held to be a cut above the rest of the country. Clearly, this position is not only immoral, but absurd. We need hardly remind the Deputy Police Commissioner that such behaviour by police officers is not a power conferred by the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago, but instead is repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution.