PCA tells PAC: Complaints against police increasing

POLICE Complaints Authority (PCA) director David West said for this year, a total of 713 complaints against police officers have been made to the authority. West added this is reflective of a trend of increasing complaints against police officers that began in 2014.

He made the comments during a meeting between PCA officials and members of the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at the Red House, Port of Spain, on Wednesday.

West recalled that in 2014-2015, when he began his tenure as PCA director, the authority had 352 complaints against police officers.

He said, “By 2021-2022 that had increased to 569 complaints.”

This, West continued, was an increase of 66.7 per cent.

He partly attributed the 713 complaints before the PCA this year because people use social media to complaints directly to the authority.

PCA deputy director Michelle Solomon-Baksh said the complainants may be ordinary citizens (including the relatives of police officers) or police officers themselves.

She referred to cases where relatives of police officers made complaints to the PCA in domestic violence situations.

In response to a question from PAC member Opposition Senator Jearlean John, Solomon-Baksh said the PCA did not direct police officers to investigate complaints which were made to it.

“Legislation mandates that no police officer is to work at the PCA. We are a civilian oversight body. So we can’t have a police officer engaged in our exercise.”

She said when the PCA referred complaints to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for further action, the DPP could then issue further instructions to the police to complete further actions which were outside of the authority’s operations.

Responding to a question from John, West clarified the difference between complaints and initial reports. He said the latter happend when “complainants first come in to the PCA and make a report but it doesn’t quite meet the standards of our serious police misconduct or our legal remit.” The number of these reports increased from 552 (2014-2015) to 1,028 (2021-2022).

West said that was an 86 per cent increase. Complaints brought before the PCA are considered closed when they are referred to either the Commissioner of Police (CoP) or the DPP for action to be taken by these respective office holders.

West told PAC members that from 2014-2022, 354 and 93 complaints were respectively sent to the CoP and DPP for action.

After explaining that the authority receives between 400 to 500 complaints per year, Solomon-Baksh said complaints were investigated by six teams of PCA officials under the supervision of West and herself.

She added that some of the matters were criminal matters which, by law, must be brought before a court before six months.

“Those matters have to be dealt with by the authority and by the teams, within a short space of time.” In cases where the authority does not complete its work on these matters within six months, Solomon-Baksh said, “If the matter goes over, the matter doesn’t die.”

She added, “We also look at disciplinary offences and usually deal with those matters within a two-year period.”

Solomon-Baksh identified murder, manslaughter, perverting the course of justice and misbehaviour in public office in a category of complex, criminal matters which historically take longer for the PCA to complete.

But she said that was not because of any staffing deficiencies on the PCA’s part. “We have to rely on information, science and other bits of information, evidence, from third parties.”

Solomon-Baksh said the police was one of those groups.

West added that delays in the investigations of complaints were sometimes the fault of the complainants.

“Sometimes they go away and they don’t tell us. They change their phone. They have so many different phones and they don’t tell us. They change their address and they don’t tell us.” West recalled many times the PCA was either trying to take a statement from complainants or get more information from them “and the thing is, they have not gotten back to us.”

In those situations, he said, “We have kept the complaint ongoing until we can issue a closure letter that we are not interested anymore.”

John did not believe the complainants should be blamed for delays in the investigation of complaints against police officers.

“They are frightened. They are afraid that somebody will find out that they made a report against them. I think that’s logical.”

John said many people did not trust the police but saw the PCA as a lifeline against rogue officers.

She suggested the PCA become more visible in the community to reassure them.

“You cannot find yourself as part of apparatus that they distrust.”

West told John that under his tenure, the PCA had conducted 27 public outreach programmes in San Fernando, Tobago and Port of Spain. He said the PCA intends to build on this going forward.

“We want to show the good work that we have been doing.”

West also told PAC members that sometimes complaints made to the authority end shortly after they begin in situations where the complainant and police officer resolved their differences amicably or one of the parties migrated.