Top cop mum on Special Operations plans

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) al­ready knows which ar­eas will re­ceive greater at­ten­tion un­der the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act, but he is not pre­pared to dis­close where those op­er­a­tions will be fo­cused.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions af­ter a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for more than 100 po­lice of­fi­cers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in ad­vanced law en­force­ment skills train­ing at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James, yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro de­clined to iden­ti­fy the com­mu­ni­ties that would be tar­get­ed for en­hanced crime-fight­ing op­er­a­tions.

“If I were to give you that (in­for­ma­tion), peo­ple would then start to move out and pre­pare them­selves for the po­lice.

“We have the in­for­ma­tion, but I’m not will­ing to share it.”

The act, which was passed in Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber, is now of­fi­cial­ly part of this coun­try’s laws fol­low­ing its procla­ma­tion by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo.

The law di­vides the coun­try in­to sev­en dif­fer­ent polic­ing dis­tricts and al­lows spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tions to be de­clared “closed ar­eas.”

With­in these ar­eas, au­thor­i­ties can im­pose cur­fews, es­tab­lish cor­dons and check­points, close roads, re­strict en­try and ex­it, and con­duct search­es with­out war­rants.

The Act forms part of the Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy to ad­dress vi­o­lent crime, along­side the in­tro­duc­tion of mi­cro po­lice units in spe­cif­ic ar­eas to en­hance po­lice pa­trol cov­er­age while re­duc­ing re­sponse times to emer­gen­cies.

As of yes­ter­day, three mi­cro polic­ing units—Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah, Grand Bazaar and Tarou­ba—were op­er­a­tional.

Asked when the re­main­ing polic­ing units would be­come func­tion­al and ready to fa­cil­i­tate op­er­a­tions, Gue­var­ro said their con­tin­ued roll­out would be guid­ed by po­lice da­ta.

“When I opened the first three (po­lice units), I said that it was based on da­ta that we utilised and again we’ll be us­ing da­ta to guide how we roll out all the rest.”

With the read­ing of the na­tion­al Bud­get for fis­cal 2027 set for Oc­to­ber 12, Gue­var­ro al­so main­tained that fund­ing was crit­i­cal to the TTPS’s crime-fight­ing plans, al­though he did not spec­i­fy which as­pects of law en­force­ment were in the most ur­gent need of fi­nanc­ing.

“Fight­ing crime costs mon­ey and we have no amount of cost that could be at­trib­uted to sav­ing hu­man lives.

“I trust that the au­thor­i­ties would take that in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when mak­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate al­lo­ca­tion for the TTPS.”