And switching gears, over the weekend, another video of alleged police abuse popped up on social media. At first glance, it seems like officers pounced on a couple of Seine Bight residents, putting one of them in a chokehold - a move which the ComPol has banned officers from using.
And while normally the ComPol is quick to call out cops who use excessive force, in this case, he defended the officer, saying that it wasn't exactly a chokehold that the officer had used.
Here's how he put it:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"It's appalling for the most part to see sometimes how the media would run with negativity when it involves police officers. I watched the video as you showed me a few minutes ago for the first time and from what I saw, the police was not really choking the person, the police was holding the person in a certain position. If you can look at the person, the person was still, for the most part, resisting and still moving his entire body which mean that the manner in which he was being held by the police did not fully restrain him so it was not per se a tight chokehold as one may want to say. And I looked at the behaviour of the persons around, how they were behaving towards the police and trying to remove the person that the police was seemingly trying to detain and again these are things that the public needs to be aware of, the police officers are out there to perform their duties and when you come so
close to the police as I saw in that video, it is tantamount to obstruction and again this is the only country in the world where people get so close to the police and nothing happens to them. And it is something that we need to change. I looked at when the incident took place with Sergeant Martinez and the guy Francis I think his name is from Majestic Alley, how certain media houses jumped on that and said all sort of things in defence of Mr Francis without even trying to find out from the police what actually took place and these are things that really and truly fuel these gang members and make them believe that they are relevant. The media even went to ehe extent of interviewing him and giving him air time and all sorts of things like glorifying him for what he did. We need to change how we do business. When this occurred, it certainly gives credence to gang members, making them feel like they are relevant and certainly they will continue whatever it is they are doing because they're getting support from the media itself."
