CoP: Police ready to ‘take back T&T from criminals’

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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With the State of Emer­gency (SoE) end­ing yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is ready to re­spond when­ev­er nec­es­sary to keep the coun­try safe.

“We are ready to turn up on each oc­ca­sion and do what needs to be done to keep Trinidad and To­ba­go safe.”

Gue­var­ro was speak­ing to re­porters at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah in Tacarigua as the last of three mi­cro po­lice units were op­er­a­tionalised yes­ter­day.

Reaf­firm­ing the TTPS’s com­mit­ment to the task ahead, he said the po­lice had all the re­sources nec­es­sary to do what was re­quired of them.

Asked how the TTPS in­tend­ed to ad­dress “closed ar­eas” as des­ig­nat­ed un­der the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, Gue­var­ro de­clined to an­swer, say­ing it was yet to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, he as­sured that the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF), was ready to do what­ev­er was need­ed, “to take back T&T from the crim­i­nals.”

Gue­var­ro at­trib­uted sev­er­al re­cent drug seizures to in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who was al­so present at the op­er­a­tional open­ing of the po­lice post, side-stepped ques­tions re­lat­ing to the pro­posed crime-fight­ing strate­gies, in­sist­ing, “The Bill is about sav­ing lives."

“Every life we save is im­por­tant to us, so this bill will be about sav­ing lives and sav­ing com­mu­ni­ties.”

He promised, “Strate­gies will come to­mor­row.”

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns raised by Op­po­si­tion mem­bers about some of the ar­eas out­lined un­der the Bill, Alexan­der said, “If you are not in­volved in crim­i­nal el­e­ments or in­volved in any kind of crim­i­nal­i­ty, there are cer­tain ini­tia­tives that won’t af­fect you at all.”

He said the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple had been mov­ing around freely dur­ing the SoE, which had been meant to tar­get on­ly the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

When asked how they in­tend­ed to de­ter­mine what would con­sti­tute a closed area, he warned, “The be­hav­iour of per­sons in your com­mu­ni­ty will de­ter­mine whether or not your area be­comes a spe­cial op­er­a­tion area.”

He added, “So if you are be­hav­ing good, then by all means, but if you are ter­ror­is­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and all of that, who knows what will hap­pen next.”