Police launch micro unit at Tarouba Interchange

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the Po­lice Ser­vice will use crime da­ta to de­ter­mine where to de­ploy its mi­cro units, rather than pub­li­cis­ing their lo­ca­tions in ad­vance.

Gue­var­ro made the state­ment this morn­ing as the Po­lice Ser­vice op­er­a­tionalised a mi­cro unit at the Tarou­ba In­ter­change in San Fer­nan­do, with the State of Emer­gency near­ing its end.

He said about 30 mi­cro units are avail­able for de­ploy­ment but stressed that their lo­ca­tions would be based on op­er­a­tional needs and analysed crime da­ta.

“We’ll be us­ing, again as I say, analysed da­ta to di­rect where these units and where re­sources will be placed,” Gue­var­ro said.

He said the units could serve as for­ward op­er­at­ing bases for sev­er­al po­lice arms, in­clud­ing tran­sit po­lice, traf­fic war­dens, task forces, op­er­a­tional units, the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment and Spe­cial Branch.

Sol­diers were al­so present at the Tarou­ba In­ter­change as part of the joint po­lice and De­fence Force ap­proach to polic­ing.

Gue­var­ro said po­lice would not re­veal the lo­ca­tions or tac­tics as­so­ci­at­ed with fu­ture de­ploy­ments, as this could al­low crim­i­nals to adapt.

“We don’t want to ad­ver­tise it out­side there to cre­ate a dif­fu­sion of crime.”

He said the Tarou­ba unit would form part of an “ac­tive di­rect­ed grid pa­trol” linked to the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre and oth­er op­er­a­tional com­mand cen­tres.

Gue­var­ro said the unit’s lo­ca­tion, close to ma­jor south­ern ar­ter­ies, would al­low po­lice to re­spond quick­ly and block routes when nec­es­sary.

The strat­e­gy will al­so in­clude drone pa­trols and re­sponse.

Gue­var­ro said peo­ple re­leased from Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders would re­turn to “a dif­fer­ent polic­ing en­vi­ron­ment”.

He added that their re­lease would not pre­vent po­lice from ar­rest­ing and charg­ing them lat­er if ev­i­dence ex­ist­ed.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der said the wider strat­e­gy rep­re­sent­ed a trans­for­ma­tion in the way crime is man­aged.