CoP defends police posts

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s move to set up 30 po­lice posts in com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go as part of its an­ti-crime plan.

While both he and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­mained tight-lipped up to yes­ter­day as to the staffing lo­gis­tics and op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments that will be re­quired to un­der­take the ini­tia­tive, Gue­var­ro dis­missed crit­i­cisms by naysay­ers that it was not nec­es­sary, es­pe­cial­ly fol­low­ing claims by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar and oth­er of­fi­cials that crime was on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry.

In a re­lease is­sued via the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro chal­lenged the ini­tia­tive’s de­trac­tors, say­ing, “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.”

In­sist­ing that the TTPS would not be dis­tract­ed by such com­men­tary, he said, “Our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty re­mains the pro­tec­tion of pub­lic safe­ty.”

He de­fend­ed the use of the posts, say­ing, “These mo­bile units are a strate­gic tool de­signed to strength­en our op­er­a­tional reach, en­hance re­spon­sive­ness, and im­prove over­all ef­fec­tive­ness.”

Re­as­sur­ing the cit­i­zen­ry that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces were act­ing in their best in­ter­est, Gue­var­ro stressed, “Every ini­tia­tive un­der­tak­en by the TTPS is ground­ed in da­ta, statu­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and a com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

The com­mis­sion­er added, “The mo­bile po­lice units rep­re­sent an­oth­er step in build­ing a mod­ern, re­spon­sive, and trust­ed Po­lice Ser­vice.”

How­ev­er, Gue­var­ro point­ed out that the use of mo­bile units is not new to the TTPS, hav­ing been in ex­is­tence for a num­ber of years.

He said these units are of­ten seen at Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties, and dur­ing the host­ing of state and diplo­mat­ic events.

Gue­var­ro ex­plained that as with all tech­nol­o­gy, im­prove­ments had been made over time and in keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment’s strate­gic di­rec­tion for law en­force­ment - a de­ci­sion was tak­en to pro­cure mi­cro‑po­lice units.

These units, he said, had been mod­i­fied to main­tain mo­bil­i­ty while of­fer­ing greater ca­pac­i­ty to law en­force­ment per­son­nel.

Say­ing each unit was de­signed to be moved seam­less­ly and re­quired on­ly min­i­mal foun­da­tion con­struc­tion, Gue­var­ro boast­ed, “The new gen­er­a­tion of units can house more of­fi­cers and ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy than the out­dat­ed mod­els.”

He al­so said the en­hanced ca­pac­i­ty of the mo­bile units was a sig­nif­i­cant for­ward step for the TTPS.

With de­ploy­ment lo­ca­tions be­ing in­formed by da­ta from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA), Gue­var­ro promised that the units would be strate­gi­cal­ly placed to coun­ter­act crime trends.

“They form a crit­i­cal part of the cur­rent an­ti‑crime strat­e­gy and will serve mul­ti­ple func­tions,” he stat­ed.

Among the ben­e­fits out­lined were im­proved re­sponse times to lo­cal is­sues; en­cour­ag­ing greater com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment be­tween of­fi­cers and res­i­dents; co­or­di­nat­ing ma­jor in­ci­dent plan­ning and re­spons­es; an avail­able base for spe­cialised op­er­a­tions and com­mand re­port­ing dur­ing emer­gen­cies; and an avail­able sup­port struc­ture for tac­ti­cal de­ploy­ments and crime sup­pres­sion in­ter­ven­tions.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to es­tab­lish the 30 joint po­lice and mil­i­tary posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go over the next four months, with six ad­di­tion­al lo­ca­tions still to be de­ter­mined.

The pro­posed lo­ca­tions in­clude the Tarou­ba Fly­over; Grand Bazaar In­ter­change; Cou­va In­ter­change; Williamsville Junc­tion, Guayagua­yare; the junc­tion of Rochard Road and Pe­nal Rock Road; the La Ro­maine in­ter­sec­tion of the South­ern Main Road and South Trunk Road; Todd’s Road; Tamana Road; Kel­ly Vil­lage; De­mer­ara Road, Aranguez; Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah, Tacarigua; Carlsen Field; Fe­lic­i­ty; La­dy Young Road; Acono Road; Mal­gretoute Junc­tion; Gol­con­da In­ter­change and Tor­rib Road in Tabaquite.

The PM said the posts are in­tend­ed to serve as op­er­a­tional bases for joint po­lice and mil­i­tary pa­trols and place se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel clos­er to com­mu­ni­ties, ma­jor roads, trans­port routes and busy junc­tions.

Works have al­ready start­ed on the posts in­tend­ed for Grand Bazaar, Tarou­ba and the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah in Tacarigua, al­though the lat­ter has re­sult­ed in a dis­pute be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.