T&T has not been affected by such a great extent in this degree of profiling as occurred in Dallas, Texas, however, the T&T Police Service needs to get its house in order quickly.
This was a warning given to the Police Service by former national security minister Gary Griffith.
Griffith said due to the concept of profiling, trust, confidence and respect, was slowly being eroded in T&T every passing day.
“When a few officers abuse their power and commit indiscriminate acts, this does not augur well for the image of our Police Service,” Griffith said.
He said the recent killings of African American men by law enforcement officials in Dallas, Texas, were based on subconscious profiling by certain officers, “where there is a great likelihood that these innocent victims were targeted and perceived as being a threat, based on them solely being African Americans, which has resulted in the more recent death of these two young men.”
“The retaliation with the killing of police officers in Dallas based on those previous killings can also be related to profiling, whereby those who committed the act, deliberately targeted police officers, hence boxing all police officers as being responsible for those two recent killings and seeing all police officers as being responsible for the act,” Griffith said.
He added that such local profiling was being seen and heard more frequently when there was a perception that “the police are abusive, the police cannot be trusted and/or the police have no respect for citizens, even though such acts may have been by just a few, but it is the whole Service that is sadly being profiled due to this.”
The greatest asset in crime solving was information that the public provided to the police, Griffith said.
He said further loss of trust and respect by the public could also be caused when citizens saw police officers allegedly deliberately forming a road block to shut down a city and cause inconvenience because of wage negotiations, or abandon their duty while securing a Prime Minister, or make public complaints about working hours while securing another Prime Minister, or deliberately abusing their authority by treating the public in an unwanted hostile and at times arrogant manner.
Griffith said trust was not built when nothing was ever done to reprimand or fire these officers, “even though the Commissioner of Police has the authority to do so, “as worst case is that they are simply suspended on full pay and return to duty when the dust settles.”
Griffith said even though such actions were committed by just a handful of officers, these individuals were causing the general public to profile the entire Police Service, which he strongly believed caused a breakdown of that element of trust and confidence.
“This is so critical for the police to be successful in their securing the same public that is now profiling them more and more because of the actions of a few,” Griffith said.
“For citizens to stop profiling the whole Police Service as being untrustworthy, which is rather unfortunate but is becoming a reality, the first hand needs to be by the TTPS itself , by providing systems to measure performance and make officers accountable for their actions. This would go a long way to reduce our local concept of profiling of Police,” he added.
On Thursday night, five police officers in the US were killed after a sniper or snipers opened fire on them. Seven other officers and two civilians were also injured, during a protest over the “innocent” killing of two black men this week.
According to a Mirror.co.uk report, a suspect, identified as Micah X Johnson, 25, was killed after police detonated a bomb subsequent to talks breaking down.
Johnson has no known criminal history or ties to terror groups.
Three other people—two men and a woman, have been taken into custody after the ambush shootings, which police described as ‘carefully planned and executed’.
US President Barack Obama said: “The entire city of Dallas is grieving and we’re grieving with them.”
Horrifying footage has also emerged from the attack including a clip which shows a police officer being executed at point blank range and another from a man who live streamed the shocking scenes.
Terrified eyewitnesses have spoken about the moment alleged snipers ‘kept shooting’ while heroic tales emerged, including a mother who turned herself into a human shield to protect her children.