AG: Opposition would not have supported more powers for PCA

ATTORNEY General Faris Al-Rawi said Government would not have received Opposition support for legislation to give the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) additional powers.

The issue of additional powers arose, once again, after it was announced that the police and the PCA would be doing separate investigations into the police killing of three men in Morvant on June 27. The incident two days of protests in East Port of Spain and other areas.

The PCA, in a statement Thursday, recalled since 2012 when Gillian Lucky was PCA director proposals were sent to the Legislative Review Committee in the Attorney General's office to be approved. The PCA said it looked forward "to our continued work with that committee to finalise these amendments which would better serve the PCA's and the public's interests."

Some of the additional powers included: Being allowed to retrieve scientific evidence from the scenes of officer-involved shootings,

including firearms, ammunition and DNA; preserving the scenes of officer-involved shootings;

and submitting for testing all evidence obtained during an interrogation of the scene of an

officer-involved shooting.

The PCA, also in an attempt to optimise the co-operation between the authority and the police, began to formulate a memorandum of understanding but the terms and conditions are yet to be finalised.

Al-Rawi, in a telephone interview, recalled when he took up the position as Attorney General he received recommendations from Lucky.

"Upon receiving those aspects we did some significant interaction with the PCA under director West over the course of several years."

He said there was a development between Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith and current director David West where they would operationalise many of the powers and facilities being requested by way of an agreement between the police and the PCA.

"That cooperative arrangement or administrative fix is very common in most other jurisdictions. The legislative requests therefore fell second to the administrative fix. It is important to note that the amendments that are now being discussed again, really don't factor in the state of agreement between the police and the PCA.

"So I'd like to hear from the director in relation to that first of all, because I received a specific instruction that there were administrative arrangements that were in effect and therefore we ought not to proceed with the amendments that were on the table."

Al-Rawi said, in the structure agreed to by the commissioner and the PCA, there was an arrangement that could achieve the administrative functionality of powers in a way that did not require legislation.

He said on the issue of handling of evidence and the PCA obtaining police powers, that would be a level of constitutional reform and a hurdle that would require the agreement of the Opposition.

"The Opposition, whilst they were in government, refused to carry out these (types of) amendments."

He added: "It is for that reason, knowing that the Opposition refused when they were in government to handle these positions, that we elected to go for the administrative fixes."

He said the Opposition did not give constitutional majority support to other proposed legislation and only did so, in some instances, when public pressure was put on them.

"It is stark and obvious what happened to the Bail Amendment (Bill) where you see the commissioner and the whole society witnessing the Opposition saying no to bail restrictions for high-powered weapons and trafficking in weapons and weapons of war. Even though the Senate passed it, independents agreed with the Government and passed it unanimously, only the Opposition in the Senate saying 'no'. So all of these things in the round said we do not have the constitutional majority to prosecute these amendments. "We hoped that during the passage of the election that we will remedy that situation and emerge with a constitutional majority and therefore we can, once and for all, put an end to the never ending story caused by the lack of agreement from my predecessors."