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The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over state­ments at­trib­uted to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, ex­plain­ing his de­ci­sion not to sus­pend of­fi­cers in­volved in the fa­tal shoot­ing of 31-year-old Joshua Sama­roo dur­ing a high-speed chase in St Au­gus­tine.

Sama­roo, a res­i­dent of Val­sayn, was killed on Jan­u­ary 20, an in­ci­dent that al­so left his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, paral­ysed. The com­mis­sion­er has said he re­viewed video footage cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia and found no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for plac­ing the of­fi­cers on sus­pen­sion.

In a re­sponse, how­ev­er, LATT said it was un­clear which footage the com­mis­sion­er re­viewed. The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that the footage it ex­am­ined ap­peared to show of­fi­cers open­ing fire on a ve­hi­cle that had crashed fol­low­ing a pur­suit, with one oc­cu­pant seem­ing­ly at­tempt­ing to sur­ren­der. Ac­cord­ing to LATT, nei­ther oc­cu­pant ap­peared to be re­turn­ing fire.