Farley welcomes security posts

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has ze­ro ob­jec­tions to po­lice posts across T&T.

And he says mo­bile se­cu­ri­ty posts are not new to the is­land, adding they helped tremen­dous­ly to curb ris­ing crime in To­ba­go two years ago.

In an in­ter­view with the me­dia on Wednes­day at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in Low­lands, Au­gus­tine said he has ob­served a pos­i­tive re­sponse to the posts na­tion­al­ly and be­lieves To­bag­o­ni­ans will wel­come them.

“We ain’t want po­lice sit down in sta­tion, we want them out in the street present and avail­able when we call them,” Au­gus­tine said.

He re­mind­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans how im­por­tant joint pa­trols have been to crime-fight­ing in the not-too-dis­tant past.

“In 2024, when we had our high­est lev­els of mur­ders (26), part of that strat­e­gy in­clud­ed joint pa­trols and in­clud­ed po­lice posts in places where none ex­ist­ed. Peo­ple per­haps don’t even re­alise that at this very mo­ment, a po­lice post is es­tab­lished at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in Gold­en Lane.”

Au­gus­tine re­called a surge in vi­o­lence with­in the Gold­en Lane com­mu­ni­ty that year, with ve­hi­cles be­ing torched and a num­ber of at­tempt­ed mur­ders. He said the po­lice post in that com­mu­ni­ty helped to quell ten­sions and re­store law and or­der.

In 2025, mur­ders in To­ba­go dropped dras­ti­cal­ly to ten. There have been sev­en mur­ders for the year thus far.

The Spey­side as­sem­bly­man said there is a lev­el of com­fort in com­mu­ni­ties where there is an in­creased po­lice pres­ence, as the pub­lic feels safer when law en­force­ment is in their com­mu­ni­ty.

Au­gus­tine said the THA will li­aise with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to dis­cuss the most suit­able lo­ca­tion for the po­lice post.

The Gov­ern­ment will be es­tab­lish­ing 30 posts at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions across the coun­try, ex­tend­ing the arm of law en­force­ment in­to com­mu­ni­ties. Twen­ty-four lo­ca­tions have al­ready been iden­ti­fied, with the re­main­ing sites still be­ing de­lib­er­at­ed.

Snr Supt Rod­hill Kirk last week rec­om­mend­ed Ply­mouth for a se­cu­ri­ty post in To­ba­go, adding that po­lice da­ta showed it was a com­mer­cial dis­trict which need­ed more polic­ing. How­ev­er, he said con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers will be held be­fore any post is es­tab­lished.

Mean­while, Au­gus­tine re­vealed that a spot is al­so be­ing pre­pared near the Gib­son Jet­ty in Bon Ac­cord to ac­com­mo­date po­lice and Coast Guard to pa­trol the Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park. Stake­hold­ers have clam­oured for greater en­force­ment of reg­u­la­tions fol­low­ing the fa­tal jet ski ac­ci­dent which claimed the life of An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie on April 8.