DCP Benjamin defends Police Interfaith Service

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin says the an­nu­al Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) In­ter­faith Ser­vice is still a rel­e­vant com­po­nent of wider polic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, not­ing that it is a means of unit­ing of­fi­cers of all faiths be­hind the com­mon goal.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side the Win­fred Atwell Au­di­to­ri­um of Queen's Hall, St Ann's Road, af­ter the ser­vice on Mon­day, Ben­jamin re­spond­ed to crit­i­cism from so­cial me­dia users who ques­tioned the mer­it of hav­ing the cer­e­mo­ny dur­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Sev­er­al users ar­gued that of­fi­cers present would have spent their time con­duct­ing an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es.

How­ev­er, Ben­jamin in­sist­ed that con­nect­ing of­fi­cers through their shared faith was a valu­able part of build­ing morale and ca­ma­raderie for the suc­cess of the TTPS as an in­sti­tu­tion.

"We recog­nise it's very im­por­tant to en­sure our of­fi­cers are found­ed in terms of their faith.

"Every­thing that we have done thus far has been be­cause of the good­ness of Almighty God, and this is a time when all re­li­gions come to­geth­er.

"We have seen a 42 per cent drop in mur­ders last year, and even this year we have seen a drop in mur­ders of 72 as op­posed to 83 last year, so God has been good to us and we re­al­ly just have to take the time to tell the pub­lic and even Almighty God, thank you."

Ben­jamin said the cer­e­mo­ny could al­so yield tan­gi­ble, prac­ti­cal re­sults by en­cour­ag­ing a sense of grat­i­tude and ap­pre­ci­a­tion among of­fi­cers to show ap­pre­ci­a­tion to each oth­er and the pub­lic they serve.

Dur­ing the ser­vice, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­liv­ered a read­ing from the book of Matthew.

As he spoke to the of­fi­cers gath­ered be­fore read­ing from the scrip­ture, Gue­var­ro said the TTPS is of­ten called on to be in a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty and pro­tec­tion.

He said, un­like God, po­lice of­fi­cers were not om­nipresent but could en­hance their cov­er­age by lever­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ty ties and oth­er fea­tures.

"We, the po­lice, can­not be om­nipresent in every part of T&T to pro­tect the cit­i­zens, so we utilise our cit­i­zens, we utilise our tech­nol­o­gy, and we utilise every­thing that can as­sist us in giv­ing us that om­nipres­ence.

"So, de­spite how well-in­ten­tioned we are, we will still get homi­cides, we will still get rob­beries, and be­cause of our re­la­tion­ship with the pub­lic, we will be able to bet­ter po­lice so­ci­ety."

Re­fer­ring to prayers of­fered by Pun­dit Anirup Ph­agu to strength­en the TTPS lead­er­ship, Gue­var­ro said such lead­er­ship was done by ex­am­ple, re­fer­ring to vis­its made across di­vi­sions dur­ing Old Year's Night pa­trols in 2025.

The cer­e­mo­ny fea­tured rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Chris­t­ian, Mus­lim, Hin­du, Ba­ha'i, and Or­isha faiths as they took turns de­liv­er­ing open­ing prayers seek­ing God's strength and pro­tec­tion for po­lice of­fi­cers while on and off du­ty.