Top Cop: 8 held, 387 patrols since police posts launched

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says that since three mi­cro polic­ing units were op­er­a­tionalised at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah, Grand Bazaar and Tarou­ba, a to­tal of eight peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed as part of op­er­a­tions orig­i­nat­ing from these posts.

Gue­var­ro out­lined the sta­tis­tics as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia at a cer­e­mo­ny mark­ing the de­struc­tion of seized drugs at the Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion Site yes­ter­day.

He urged the pub­lic to be pa­tient as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ues to as­sess the da­ta and sta­tis­tics of the ac­tiv­i­ties at these posts.

He said 387 mo­bile pa­trols from these units were con­duct­ed with 78 foot pa­trols.

A to­tal of 16 fixed penal­ty no­tices were al­so is­sued, where the mi­cro units were used as stag­ing ar­eas for op­er­a­tions.

He af­firmed the im­por­tance of these units in ex­pand­ing the cov­er­age of po­lice to en­sure a quick re­sponse to emer­gen­cies.

“Tran­sit po­lice, traf­fic war­dens, the di­vi­sion­al of­fi­cers, tac­ti­cal and Task Force and op­er­a­tional units, they all func­tion from with­in those units on a ro­ta­tion ba­sis.

“We do not wish to ad­ver­tise to the pub­lic how and when these op­er­a­tions are done, but I would just urge the pub­lic to give it some time and we will mea­sure the suc­cess­es from those units and de­cide how to tweak it to serve the pub­lic.”

Gue­var­ro said he felt the mi­cro po­lice units were a suc­cess in serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ties, not­ing that the Tarou­ba post was in­volved in an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise as re­cent as the week­end, which he de­scribed as be­ing “suc­cess­ful.”