ASP Dickson: Police officers

Senior Investigative Reporter

shaliza.hassanali@guardian.co.tt

With crime growing out of control, Police Social and Welfare Association president ASP Gideon Dickson believes police officers have become “pawns in a chess game” as they try to protect law-abiding citizens from the criminals who have been creating mayhem in the country.

That was his response to a question from Guardian Media about reports of a death squad within the T&T Police Service (TTPS).

Police officers have killed 21 people this year. This includes six fatal shootings in St Augustine, five in Tunapuna, three in Caroni, six in Freeport and one in Sea Lots.

Between August 11 and 14, there were nine killings as a result of two police-involved shootings.

On August 11, Amir “Pa” Bissoon, Jodi “Gia” Barath and Joseph Ramjit were fatally shot by officers near the Caroni Cremation Site. The trio were alleged members of the Resistance gang.

Three days later Jovan Simon, Nicholas Caesar, Saleem John, Keron John, Isaiah Olivierre and Salome Ranghill, who were identified as bandits, were gunned down by officers at a house in Freeport.

Some people praised the police for doing their work but others felt the killings were excessive and asked if there were assassins in the TTPS.

Dickson denied the allegations and defended police officers.

“People not saying that, so I don’t know where it is coming from,” he said.

He said last Monday, a social media user had threatened police officers.

“We have been living in some precarious times,” added Dickson who said police officers have “the most thankless job” and operate “under magnified lenses.”

Whenever there is a situation or “fall out” in the home, school, business place or community, it comes back to the police to treat the matter.

“It’s a job we signed up for,” he said.

Asked if the killings were too many, with nine in three days, Dickson said police officers are guided by a “use of force policy” and operate within the confines of the law.

“Every crime scene you go on you are seeing 5.56 rounds and 7.62 rounds. There are more guns, more shootings, more murders and fewer persons being taken before the courts,” he said.

Dickson said people charged with murder can now get bail and once they are in the public space, they continue to act with impunity.

“When the police have to engage these persons who are not putting down their weapons . . . how the outcome is really expected.”

Commenting on concerns raised recently by Police Complaints Authority (PCA) director David West that the officers involved in recent shootings were not wearing body cameras, Dickson said there were not enough body cameras for all 7,846 police officers. The 4,280 body cameras currently available are issued to operational units.

He said while West is “demonising the police” for not using the body cameras “the public is glorifying the police because the public wants to get a relief from this scourge of criminal activity. My officers don’t take pride and joy in taking somebody else life, you know, so we are placed between a rock and a hard place.”

Dickson complained that police officers are “treated as a stepchild.”

He said: “We are expected to give the most. We are given the least. We come like a pawn in a chess game.”

When a coroner’s inquest is requested into a fatal police shooting most times “officers are not found to be in the wanting,” he claimed.

“The facts, as relayed by both the witnesses and experts and the evidence and everything, most times, cause these officers to be exonerated.”

Police officers alone cannot solve crime, said Dickson. The judiciary, prisons, Coast Guard, Customs and Excise Division (CED) and Immigration Division have a part to play.

“We have to stop being hypocritical,” he said.

‘I have real hate for the police now’

Garth Richards’ father was an upstanding, respected member of the TTPS for decades.

Richards looked up to his father, Maston Richards. who worked alongside then police commissioner Randolph Burroughs and as an acting sergeant, managed the Four Roads and Western Police Stations.

“I had great admiration and love for the police service because of my father’s stance to uphold the law,” 57-year-old Richards said during a telephone interview on Friday.

All that changed when Richard’s only son, Fabian Richards and two of his friends Leonardo Williams and Isaiah Roberts were killed by police on Independence Square on July 7, 2022.

Autopsies performed on the Beetham Gardens men showed they were shot from behind multiple times.

Outraged by what they described as unjustified killings, residents of Beetham Gardens and East Port-of-Spain blocked the main route in and out of the capital city causing gridlock for several hours.

“I have real hate for the police now. I ain’t go lie. I can’t stand them,” Richard said, his voice dropping as he spoke.

“They take meh innocent child from meh just so. I can never digest and accept that.”

Richards said police officers who have been abusing their authority and taking the law into their own hands should be flushed out of the TTPS.

“Those involved in extrajudicial killings have to be purged from the service,” he said.

The recent upsurge in police killings has led him to believe “a hit squad exists in the service.”

After conducting an independent investigation into the triple murder, the PCA on May 25, 2023, recommended to the DPP that a coroner’s inquest be held.

Richards said two years after the fatal shootings, the police’s investigation seemed far from complete.

“It’s just dragging on and on and frustrating the families. To tell you the truth I have no trust in the service. They just dancing you around. That is what does make people go to their grave before time . . . because you feel you would never get justice.”

Senior Supt Neil Brandon-John, lead investigator for the case, said the investigation is 90 per cent complete.

“I am awaiting a report from the Forensic Science Centre which is very crucial and critical to the investigation. I am anticipating by next week I should get the report from forensic,” he said.

Brandon-John said once the report reaches his hands “the entire file would be submitted to the DPP for him to give me a directive on how to proceed.”

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