PORT OF SPAIN, Oct 20 (IPS) - Friends and relatives of Sherman Monseque blocked the streets along the western main road in Trinidad last weekend demanding an investigation into his death.
Monseque, 18, had been shot in the head and killed by police, who later claimed he had pointed a gun at them and fired several shots in their direction.
And although Police Commissioner Trevor Paul has ordered a probe into the incident, the victim's friends and relatives are demanding that the officers responsible be charged with murder.
The killing and subsequent demonstration are becoming ever too prevalent in the Caribbean, as law enforcement agencies come under heavy scrutiny over claims some of their members have become trigger happy and are involved in various acts of brutality.
Former Trinidad Prime Minister Basdeo Panday told Parliament last week that as of Aug. 22, in 2004, ?we have seen 14 murders allegedly committed by policemen, amounting to a crude display of police brutality.?
?How can the population be expected to have confidence in the police, one of the most important institutions in a democracy, when they continue to operate above the law by terrorising and murdering citizens who depend on them for assistance and protection,? asked Panday.
Former president of the Senate, Michael Williams, took out a newspaper advertisement last weekend demanding justice for Ignatius Owen, a worker in his family's business, who died soon after being arrested by police on a child maintenance charge.
The ad said Owen's eye had been crushed, his teeth knocked out, one arm and ribs broken and his body beaten and crushed by violence.
?You will not be forgotten, we demand justice in your name,? Williams said, while his brother Gerard wrote in the advertisement, ?we have to let people know that Ignatius was a real person with a life. How could he die like a stray dog??
Non-governmental organisation (NGO) Communities Mobilising Against Crime (CMAC), said authorities must move quickly to deal with acts of police brutality.
?We need to return the police service to what it is intended to achieve and that is to protect and serve,? CMAC President Paul Pantin told reporters following Monseque's death.
Law lecturer and former Trinidad magistrate Dana Seethahal says while acts of police brutality have occurred for many years, a combination of events, including better-trained journalists, might well be the impetus for renewed interest in the matter.
?People are more conscious of their rights and families are going to the media,? she told IPS, noting it is also important that authorities develop ?the proper checks and balances? to deal with the allegations.
Jamaica-based political scientist Neville Duncan believes there is a need to establish ?an impartial, independent investigative force that has all the forensic and related skills for investigating cases of this sort and to do so speedily.?
Duncan said while he is certain that police brutality does occur, ?part of the reason is the police force is under-manned, it is under-equipped, and it needs to be upgraded in terms of intellectual and managerial capacity in order to deal with the newer kinds of crimes.?
?In Jamaica, in Guyana, in Trinidad we see this particular development of new types of crimes involving murder and the use of small arms, so it is a serious problems and I think the police force as a whole is tempted to react outside of the law that establishes how they can act,? he told IPS.
Guyana's attempt at dealing with alleged extra-judicial killings by a ?death squad? to which Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj and senior military officials have been linked has been stalled by politicking and public wariness.
The government and the opposition in the tiny South American nation are at loggerheads over the terms of reference of the commission established to investigate the crimes, while the recent murder of the self-confessed ?death squad? informer, may have forced witnesses to shun the process.
Justice Ian Chang, chairman of the three-member commission, said recently, ?where the commissioners perceive that a witness or potential witness is in need of protection in the interest of his own security, the commissioners shall request the commissioner of police to offer and provide such protection.?
But the Guyana Bar Association has also expressed reservations about the protection of witnesses, since some of them have made allegations against the police and senior government officials.
The deaths of witnesses are also affecting allegations of police brutality in Jamaica, where citizens have taken to the streets to demand justice.
In one instance, angry residents of Bay Farm Villa, just outside the capital Kingston, protested the death of 19-year-old George Williams. Jamaica police said the youth was killed in a shoot-out, but residents claimed he was killed cold-blooded.
Human rights group Amnesty International (AI) has long complained about acts of police brutality in Jamaica. Two years ago, the London-based organisation started a letter-writing campaign on the issue.
Earlier this year, a Jamaican court was told that a key witness in the murder trial of Senior Superintendent of Police Reneto Adams and five other policemen had been killed.
The six officers had been charged with the murder of four people in a rural community a year ago. The police had claimed the four were killed during a shoot-out, but a probe by local detectives backed by Britain's Scotland Yard failed to find evidence to back that claim and the director of public prosecutions ordered that the six be charged.
The prosecution accused the policemen of planting a spent bullet shell at the crime scene, saying they conspired to kill the occupants of the house.
In the midst of a crime wave in East Kingston in 2001, Adam was assigned to head the new Crime Management Unit (CMU), which was given a mandate to target extortionists, carjackers, gangs and so-called community leaders or ?dons.? But the CMU was involved in a series of controversial killings, ending in its disbanding this year.
Acts of police brutality have recently emerged in Caribbean states not known for such activities. In Barbados, three police officers appeared in court in August after a newspaper photographer caught them on camera in a fracas with two youths.
In Antigua, Deputy Prime Minister Wilmoth Daniel told reporters that ?police could be part of the rise in crime,? after members of his family were beaten up by a group that included a police officer.
Last week, television viewers were shocked at the treatment meted out to Angela Cepal, who was protesting the lack of water in her rural village in St Lucia.
The television news showed a police officer thrusting Cepal against the concrete wall, with his fingers around her throat. ?I have pressed two charges against him, police brutality and false charges,? Cepal said later.
The St Lucia National Organisation of Women (NOW) condemned ?the unnecessary violence? used by the police. ?We stand firmly against violence against women. We believe the treatment of Mrs Cepal is embarrassing for the image of the Royal St Lucia Police and requires a public apology,? it said in a statement.
St Lucians have ?all but lost faith? in the local police service, wrote 'THE STAR' newspaper. ?While officials laud the positive effects of community-based policing, established to repair the division between the public and the police, the wound is re-opened every time incidents like the case of Angela Cepal occur.
