TTPS defends mobile police units as key anti-crime strategy

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has de­fend­ed its de­ploy­ment of mo­bile po­lice units, de­scrib­ing them as a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of its an­ti-crime strat­e­gy amid pub­lic de­bate over the ini­tia­tive.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Fri­day, the TTPS said mo­bile po­lice units are not a new con­cept, not­ing that they have ex­ist­ed for sev­er­al years but have been up­grad­ed as part of the Gov­ern­ment's strate­gic di­rec­tion for law en­force­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice ser­vice, the new­ly pro­cured mi­cro-po­lice units re­tain their mo­bil­i­ty while of­fer­ing greater op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty. The units can be re­lo­cat­ed across the coun­try with min­i­mal foun­da­tion work and are ca­pa­ble of ac­com­mo­dat­ing more of­fi­cers and ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy than pre­vi­ous mod­els.

The TTPS said lo­ca­tions for the units are se­lect­ed us­ing da­ta from its Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch to en­sure they are strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned to ad­dress crime trends.

The units are ex­pect­ed to serve mul­ti­ple func­tions, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, rapid re­sponse to in­ci­dents, ma­jor in­ci­dent plan­ning and co­or­di­na­tion, act­ing as for­ward op­er­at­ing bases for spe­cialised op­er­a­tions, pro­vid­ing on-the-ground com­mand dur­ing emer­gen­cies, and sup­port­ing tac­ti­cal de­ploy­ments and crime sup­pres­sion ini­tia­tives.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro ac­knowl­edged the crit­i­cism that fol­lowed the an­nounce­ment of the strat­e­gy but de­fend­ed the ini­tia­tive.

"Yet it is pass­ing strange that in­di­vid­u­als who claim to pos­sess se­cu­ri­ty ex­per­tise fail to grasp such a ba­sic con­cept, choos­ing in­stead to dis­miss any and all ini­tia­tives in­tro­duced by law en­force­ment. The TTPS will not be dis­tract­ed by such com­men­tary," Gue­var­ro said.

He added that the ser­vice's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty re­mains the pro­tec­tion of pub­lic safe­ty and said the mo­bile units are in­tend­ed to strength­en op­er­a­tional reach, im­prove re­spon­sive­ness and en­hance over­all polic­ing ef­fec­tive­ness.

Gue­var­ro al­so sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic that the de­ploy­ment is based on ev­i­dence and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

"The pub­lic can be as­sured that every ini­tia­tive un­der­tak­en by the TTPS is ground­ed in da­ta, statu­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and a com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. The mo­bile po­lice units rep­re­sent an­oth­er step in build­ing a mod­ern, re­spon­sive, and trust­ed Po­lice Ser­vice," he said.