Alexander: Some police post locations being reconsidered

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Some lo­ca­tions ini­tial­ly iden­ti­fied for Gov­ern­ment’s 30 po­lice posts are be­ing re­con­sid­ered be­cause law en­force­ment may not re­gard the orig­i­nal sites as strate­gi­cal­ly suit­able, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has re­vealed.

Alexan­der said the ini­tia­tive has been in de­vel­op­ment for more than a year, but ex­plained that pro­posed lo­ca­tions can be shift­ed fol­low­ing as­sess­ments by law-en­force­ment of­fi­cials.

The dis­clo­sure comes af­ter Gov­ern­ment com­plet­ed the in­stal­la­tion of a cou­ple posts over the week­end, in­clud­ing the con­tentious one at the Ed­die Hart Recre­ation­al Ground in Tacarigua, as part of its lat­est an­ti-crime strat­e­gy.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that 30 mo­bile po­lice posts would be de­ployed across T&T as part of that ini­tia­tive.

How­ev­er, the ini­tia­tive has come un­der scruti­ny from Op­po­si­tion par­ties, which have called for trans­paren­cy over how much is be­ing spent on the posts and the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures used for the project.

Asked about those con­cerns yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said, “We are al­so ask­ing for the Op­po­si­tion to be trans­par­ent with Bal­isi­er House.”

He said se­lect­ing the lo­ca­tions was not sim­ply a mat­ter of de­cid­ing that a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty should re­ceive a post.

“This has been a year and more in the mak­ing and we will go to an area, but it might not be an area that law en­force­ment see as a strate­gic one. So, we could re­con­sid­er that area and move low­er down, or high­er up, or high­er in­ter­sec­tion,” Alexan­der said.

“So, that is what we’re do­ing right now. We are look­ing at the area, but at the same time we want to get the fa­cil­i­ties to make the of­fi­cers com­fort­able as they pro­tect cit­i­zens, be­cause again, this is about pub­lic safe­ty. That’s where the fo­cus is.”

Asked fur­ther about the lo­ca­tions, Alexan­der con­firmed ad­just­ments were be­ing made to some of those pre­vi­ous­ly ex­am­ined.

“Yeah, there are some ar­eas that we have looked at, but oth­ers we are twist­ing or mov­ing the goal­posts some­what, if you want to call it that. Any­where you see the mo­bile booths al­ready erect­ed, that means that we are think­ing about that lo­ca­tion. We have al­ready dealt with that lo­ca­tion and we are mov­ing for­ward.”

Work on the po­lice posts at Tarou­ba, Ed­die Hart Grounds and Grand Bazaar were com­plet­ed over the week­end.

Alexan­der, how­ev­er, would not dis­close how many po­lice of­fi­cers or De­fence Force per­son­nel would be as­signed to the in­di­vid­ual posts. He said those de­ci­sions would in­volve Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice-Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel.

“What I can tell you is this, yeah, I don’t want to, lis­ten, that is a strate­gic arrange­ment and I wouldn’t want to give out such in­for­ma­tion to mem­bers of the pub­lic, but what I can tell you is this, both the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Chief of De­fence Staff, we will sit, we’ll have a con­ver­sa­tion on how we in­tend to treat the amount of per­son­nel that will be at any one lo­ca­tion, at any one time.”

The ques­tion of staffing comes as Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to in­crease man­pow­er with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, which is cur­rent­ly un­der­tak­ing a re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise.

Alexan­der said an­oth­er group of po­lice of­fi­cers is ex­pect­ed to be­come avail­able next month.

“Next month a num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers will be com­ing out, I think it’s 233. We have the prison ser­vice go­ing in, there are per­sons al­ready start­ed to train and next month an­oth­er 250 is go­ing in, so there are 250 by 250 and next year March is 300.”

Asked whether the roll­out of the po­lice posts was part of the Gov­ern­ment’s se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse as the State of Emer­gency ap­proach­es its end in Sep­tem­ber, Alexan­der did not give a di­rect an­swer.

“If the cit­i­zens be­have in a man­ner that is con­sis­tent with good, prop­er, par­ent­ing, good and prop­er re­spect for per­sons, then we might not have to do it again,” he said.