Kali­fa Clyne

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs main­tains that the ac­qui­si­tion of the aer­i­al sur­veil­lance planes to as­sist in crime-fight­ing was above board, de­spite the fact that a re­port was for­ward­ed to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Gibbs said this af­ter the launch of the ex­pan­sion of the 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing ini­tia­tive to the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion at the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day. "When we look at equip­ment tools for the Po­lice er­vice we want to find the best ways to do our job and so look­ing at the air­craft is one way to have a mo­bile pa­trol unit," Gibbs said. Asked whether he felt the in­ves­ti­ga­tion by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan would clear any mis­giv­ings Gibbs de­clined to com­ment.

"I can't com­ment on any­thing the Prime Min­is­ter has said or done. I can on­ly say that we ac­quired this piece of equip­ment for test­ing pur­pos­es. We in­tend to eval­u­ate it dur­ing its time with us and at the end of that we would see if it met our needs to help us re­duce crime on the streets," Gibbs said. He said test­ing of the air­craft had not be­gun as the pi­lot train­ing need­ed to be con­duct­ed in or­der to get max­i­mum use of the equip­ment. Gibbs said the air­craft was among the equip­ment which the Po­lice Ser­vice had looked at in terms of crime-fight­ing tools. "This is just one piece of equip­ment that we are test­ing out to see if it will meet our needs in T&T," he added. Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki, who launched the ini­tia­tive, praised the project as a suc­cess in the West­ern Di­vi­sion.

It was launched in the West­ern Di­vi­sion last April. Ewats­ki said the project had been re­ceiv­ing pos­i­tive re­sults.

He said while the Freeport and Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tions would be used as de­ploy­ment sta­tions, the oth­er sta­tions in the di­vi­sion would be used as po­lice ser­vice cen­tres. Ewats­ki an­nounced that the polic­ing ini­tia­tive would be ex­pend­ing to the To­ba­go and North­ern Di­vi­sions soon, with To­ba­go ex­pect­ed to be on board by next month. He said the Po­lice Ser­vice was in the process of en­sur­ing of­fi­cers had the right amount of ve­hi­cles as well as the ap­pro­pri­ate ve­hi­cles to suc­cess­ful­ly car­ry out their du­ties.