Guevarro: I am commissioner for all of T&T

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro yes­ter­day sought to re­as­sure cit­i­zens that polic­ing would re­main im­par­tial across the coun­try, de­spite the Gov­ern­ment's stat­ed in­ten­tion to im­ple­ment pro­vi­sions of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill (SOB) in con­stituen­cies rep­re­sent­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter a pass­ing-out pa­rade at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der main­tained his po­si­tion that if res­i­dents in cer­tain ar­eas were op­posed to the SOB, he would not force it up­on them.

"If you do not want some­thing, we'll give it to some­body else," Alexan­der said.

How­ev­er, he added that the po­lice ser­vice's man­date ex­tend­ed to the en­tire coun­try.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go is what the po­lice in­tend to serve," he said, stress­ing that of­fi­cers were not serv­ing any par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty.

His com­ments ap­peared to con­trast with ear­li­er state­ments that the SOB would be in­tro­duced on­ly in UNC-con­trolled con­stituen­cies.

Gue­var­ro, mean­while, em­pha­sised that his du­ty re­mained to serve the en­tire na­tion with "im­par­tial­i­ty, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and in­tegri­ty."

"So, thus far, I don't think there is any­thing to wor­ry about," he said.

The CoP made the re­marks while wel­com­ing 235 new re­cruits, com­pris­ing 201 men and 34 women, in­to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Ad­dress­ing the grad­u­ates, Alexan­der told them, "The streets are wait­ing on you."

When lat­er asked whether he was re­fer­ring on­ly to com­mu­ni­ties with­in UNC-held con­stituen­cies, the min­is­ter again dis­missed con­cerns about un­equal treat­ment un­der the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion.

"If you do not want some­thing, we'll give it to some­body else," he re­it­er­at­ed.

Gue­var­ro, how­ev­er, urged both the me­dia and the pub­lic not to spec­u­late about how the leg­is­la­tion would be im­ple­ment­ed, not­ing that the par­lia­men­tary process had not yet been com­plet­ed.

He point­ed out that the bill would still re­quire pas­sage in the Sen­ate and pres­i­den­tial as­sent be­fore be­com­ing law.

"Thus far, de­pend­ing on if it is passed in the House and the Sen­ate and it is as­sent­ed to, I want to re­as­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice stands ready, will­ing and able to en­force the laws that are passed," he said.

Gue­var­ro stressed that the TTPS re­mained a law en­force­ment agency guid­ed by strong in­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples.

"The TTPS is a law en­force­ment agency and we hold very strong to our moor­ings," he said.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed that the ser­vice's polic­ing pos­ture re­mained un­changed and that of­fi­cers would con­tin­ue tar­get­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty wher­ev­er it oc­curred.

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress, Alexan­der de­part­ed from his pre­pared re­marks, tak­ing a hand­held mi­cro­phone and walk­ing among the re­cruits as­sem­bled on the pa­rade square.

"Pass­ing out to­day is not the end. It is on­ly the be­gin­ning of your test," he told them.

"The re­al test is when you leave the pa­rade square to­day."

He chal­lenged the re­cruits to ex­am­ine their own val­ues, ask­ing whether they pos­sessed in­tegri­ty, in­tend­ed to per­form their du­ties with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, re­spect and dig­ni­ty, and were pre­pared to work as a team in pur­suit of ex­cel­lence.

As the re­cruits re­spond­ed af­fir­ma­tive­ly, Alexan­der con­tin­ued: "What will hap­pen when peo­ple you know ask you to turn a blind eye? Would you?"

A re­sound­ing "No, sir" echoed across the pa­rade square.

"Or when your col­leagues de­cide to do some­thing that is wrong, do you have the in­tegri­ty to stand against it?" he asked.

Warn­ing that they would face eth­i­cal chal­lenges through­out their ca­reers, Alexan­der said the pub­lic would test their re­solve.

"The streets are wait­ing on you, and they want to test you," he said.

He en­cour­aged the new of­fi­cers to hold their heads high and demon­strate to the na­tion that they were com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing and serv­ing with pride.

"There are times when you will be test­ed, when your in­tegri­ty will come in­to ques­tion. They can make al­le­ga­tions against you, and that's al­right. But nev­er give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to say, 'You see what I said.'"

"You young men and women have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to change the game. We ex­pect you to de­fend this na­tion by any law­ful means nec­es­sary," Alexan­der said.