Sturge rejects ZOSO claims as experts weigh police-army posts

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has re­ject­ed the Op­po­si­tion’s claim that the Gov­ern­ment’s planned roll­out of 30 joint po­lice-army posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go is an in­tro­duc­tion of the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO), in­sist­ing the ini­tia­tive is fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing mea­sur­able re­sults in the fight against crime.

The joint posts are to be es­tab­lished over the next four months as Gov­ern­ment ex­pands its se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Sturge dis­missed claims by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les that the ini­tia­tive was an at­tempt to “qui­et­ly rein­tro­duce” the con­cept.

“It is not a ZOSO mea­sure,” he said.

“The Op­po­si­tion is al­ways ready to cry wolf but wouldn’t deign to pro­vide any de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion to back up their claims. They are all about sound bites; we are about de­liv­ery and mea­sur­able re­sults in crime fight­ing.”

Asked whether mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) would be grant­ed po­lice pow­ers un­der the ini­tia­tive, Sturge replied: “No, that’s why it’s joint.”

He said the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tives of the new se­cu­ri­ty posts are “vis­i­bil­i­ty, de­ter­rence and rapid re­sponse.”

In a Face­book post on Mon­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said the ini­tia­tive was in re­sponse to years of re­quests from com­mu­ni­ties for a greater se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence.

She said the joint po­lice-army posts would pro­vide cit­i­zens with “a sense of com­fort” while help­ing com­mu­ni­ties re­claim pub­lic spaces.

The an­nounce­ment has drawn dif­fer­ing re­ac­tions from se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, with two crim­i­nol­o­gists of­fer­ing con­trast­ing as­sess­ments while a for­mer mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion en­dorsed the move.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad de­scribed the es­tab­lish­ment of the joint posts as “a good move” but stressed that their ef­fec­tive­ness would ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on how they are im­ple­ment­ed.

He re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the de­ploy­ments were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed or con­cen­trat­ed in pre­dom­i­nant­ly UNC con­stituen­cies, say­ing he ex­pect­ed the lo­ca­tions to be de­ter­mined pri­mar­i­ly by crime da­ta and op­er­a­tional con­sid­er­a­tions.

Seep­er­sad ar­gued the posts should serve as op­er­a­tional bases rather than sta­t­ic check­points, with of­fi­cers main­tain­ing a strong mo­bile pres­ence through foot and ve­hi­cle pa­trols.

He al­so dis­missed claims that the strat­e­gy was out­dat­ed, say­ing re­search con­sis­tent­ly shows that vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence can re­duce crim­i­nal of­fend­ing, low­er fear of crime and strength­en trust be­tween law en­force­ment and com­mu­ni­ties.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Keron King cau­tioned against re­ly­ing too heav­i­ly on joint mil­i­tary-po­lice de­ploy­ments as a long-term crime re­duc­tion strat­e­gy.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that such pa­trols may re­as­sure cit­i­zens and re­duce pub­lic anx­i­ety, he ar­gued that sim­i­lar “hard hand” ap­proach­es have pro­duced dis­ap­point­ing re­sults in sev­er­al Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries.

In­stead, King called for a com­pre­hen­sive vi­o­lence re­duc­tion strat­e­gy ground­ed in ev­i­dence-based polic­ing.

King en­cour­aged the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op a proac­tive, da­ta-dri­ven polic­ing mod­el along­side in­ter­ven­tions that tar­get the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­ber and Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor Clive Dot­tin al­so backed the ini­tia­tive, not­ing that he had pub­licly ad­vo­cat­ed for joint po­lice-army pa­trols about three years ago.

He said many of the com­mu­ni­ties where he and his vol­un­teers work have re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed the need for a stronger se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence and urged Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment the pro­gramme as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

How­ev­er, Dot­tin said the of­fi­cers as­signed to the posts should go be­yond en­force­ment by be­com­ing trust­ed role mod­els with­in the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.

He en­cour­aged of­fi­cers to build close re­la­tion­ships with res­i­dents, en­gage schools, homes and recre­ation cen­tres, and work with young peo­ple seek­ing to leave lives of crime be­hind.

Re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism that the ini­tial roll­out ap­pears con­cen­trat­ed in con­stituen­cies tra­di­tion­al­ly rep­re­sent­ed by the UNC, Dot­tin urged against politi­cis­ing the ini­tia­tive.

He sug­gest­ed the pro­gramme should be viewed as the first phase of a broad­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy and called on both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to work to­geth­er to com­bat crime.