AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Cpl Roger Daniel and I went to the Olympic games three times to represent Trinidad and Tobago as a pistol marksman.

I was born in Fort George, St James but spent the majority of my life in Morvant.

We used to ride trolley coming down from the fort, but boy days was really in Morvant, walk to the Savannah and fly kites.

I come from a big family, maybe some 20-something people.

We don’t get together as often since this covid thing started.

I’m the last of four kids and I have four kids, blessings to me. I always shout them out by name wherever I go to shoot: Christian Daniel; Shaquille Daniel is in the Defence Force; Xavier and my daughter, Kiyomi, six foot tall, two inches shorter than me, the tallest of my children.

As you blink your eye, they grow. By the time you turn around.

I went to Lower Morvant Government Primary, Morvant-Laventille Junior Sec and Malick Senior Comprehensive.

At school, I started track and field and branched to badminton and hockey.

And now I’m shooting.

After what I’ve been through as a police officer, I am definitely a believer in God! At the end of it, don’t matter what you going through, God is there for you.

Death is a constant as a police officer.

Is a lot. Families falling apart.

I was in the military for 22 years, so I had some interaction somewhat, trained to be a soldier.

So death is not something new for me. Incidents where boats blow up, bodies cut in half, you seeing body parts. It prepared for me the challenge of police work. It gave you more face toface.

It’s not an easy thing to see a dead body, somebody shot and bleed out on the ground. But I pray for the strength to keep going.

It’s true that police put their lives on the line as part of the work.

In a situation where I have to walk in somewhere alone, not knowing what will happen, I prep myself for do or die. I am hyped. I tell myself that, if anything should happen, I have to come out on top. I have to protect you all, the public, protect myself and get back home to my family.

No matter what come to me, there can be no failure.

Vigilance is everything in my job.

[caption id="attachment_954894" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Cpl Roger Daniel won a silver medal at the Pan American and Commonwealth Games. He was Olympic Sportsman of the Year 2010 and 2011. - Mark Lyndersay[/caption]

At one time, everywhere you turned in Trinidad, there was a sporting club. Malvern. Casuals. Harvard was big.

Out of school, I joined Essex and they grew me in hockey.

From there I did masonry at Youth Camp and developed a hockey team and we won out everything. And then I went to Paragon and started playing national hockey when I was about 19. I went to the Commonwealth, Carifta and Pan American games, but TT hockey never reached Olympics level. Sadly enough.

But we’re still trying.

I was still playing national hockey when I joined the Defence Force.

I hadn’t had any firearms training at all when, one day, we went on the Trinidad Rifle Association shooting ran