Emancipation Support Committee chairman, Khafra Kambon, is calling ’on the authorities to launch an urgent, independent investigation’ into the fatal shooting of Beetham Gardens residents Fabian Mauge, 26, and Ricky Roberts, 25, by the police, which triggered protests from some of their neighbours on Thursday night.

Kambon also said ’silent consent can no longer be given to ’brutal actions’ against certain sections of our population, as he called on the police to use new approaches to occurrences such as the protests on Thursday night.

Many Beetham residents claimed police abuse during the protests, while the law enforcers maintained they were acting within the law.

’War zone images from the Beetham beginning the night of October 15, and heart-rending stories from residents of the housing estate must serve as a wake up call to this nation,’ Kambon said in a statement issued by the committee.

Kambon referred to the police report that Beetham residents Mauge and Roberts had allegedly shot and killed former area resident Anderson Bynoe, 36, at Broadway in Port of Spain, and when the police caught up with the suspects in the area they fired their weapons first, which forced the lawmen to return fire, killing both men.

Bynoe’s and Mauge’s relatives said, however, that they were both unarmed at the time of their deaths.

’Whatever the truth of the incidents surrounding the shooting deaths of two young men at the Beetham Estate, the reaction of the community en masse reflects a disbelief in the police story. It also indicates a deep sense of grievance against the police, and against a society that makes whole communities feel like unwanted citizens whose rights can be freely trampled,’ Kambon said.

The police undertook what they described as a zero tolerance approach to the protests that saw some Beethem Gardens residents blocking two of the east-bound lanes of the Beetham Highway with burning debris and, at one stage, threw rocks, pieces of bricks and other debris at vehicles passing on the highway and the nearby Priority Bus Route.

’The Emancipation Support Committee calls for an immediate halt to abusive military interventions into our communities,’ Kambon said.