Geisha Kow­lessar

In the wake of what ap­pears to be dishar­mo­ny be­tween Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and his charges, the top cop is urg­ing of­fi­cers to put aside their grous­es and serve the na­tion. Gibbs made the ap­peal as he vis­it­ed the Spree Si­mon Pa­n­yard The­atre, Courts Sound Spe­cial­ists, Uni-Stars, So­lo Har­monites and Rene­gades Steel Or­ches­tra on Wednes­day night. Al­so on the tour were Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy and Chief of De­fence Staff Brigadier Roland Maun­dy.

On Tues­day, hun­dreds of po­lice of­fi­cers in North, Cen­tral and East stayed away from their jobs, dis­sat­is­fied with wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and re­cent com­ments by Gibbs. Of­fi­cers were al­so of­fend­ed by Gibbs' state­ment last week Thurs­day at a meet­ing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, where he said there was no need for an in­crease in the num­ber of of­fi­cers but rather for ex­ist­ing of­fi­cers to do their jobs. Dur­ing Wednes­day night's vis­it to the pa­n­yards, Gibbs urged of­fi­cers to take their role se­ri­ous­ly.

"All our of­fi­cers are hired ba­si­cal­ly to serve the pub­lic and we want to do that the best way we can in terms of mak­ing sure that we pro­tect their in­ter­est and they don't feel at risk," he said. "So any kind of ac­tion the of­fi­cers take I hope they take that in­to con­sid­er­a­tion." He said po­lice of­fi­cers must place cit­i­zens "first" and "af­ter that" he hoped wage ne­go­ti­a­tions would be suc­cess­ful. Say­ing an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives were be­ing fi­nalised for the two-day cel­e­bra­tion, Gibbs said he an­tic­i­pat­ed crime to be at a min­i­mum.

"We got our plan­ning com­mit­tee putting things to­geth­er and mak­ing sure that Car­ni­val is done in a peace­ful way and that we don't have a lot of in­ci­dents of crime," he said. The vis­its to the pa­n­yards was a first for the top cop who de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as "in­ter­est­ing." "It has been an in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for me...I got the chance to talk to some of the peo­ple and see all the tal­ent and the hard work," Gibbs said. The tour has come in the wake of two re­cent killings of mem­bers of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty. Sandy, how­ev­er, said it was al­ways his in­ten­tion to vis­it re­spec­tive pa­n­yards, adding that it was de­cid­ed to tour the the­atres where the mur­ders oc­curred.

De­scrib­ing the killings as sense­less, Sandy urged crim­i­nals to sur­ren­der their weapons. Maun­dy said the De­fence Force was ex­am­in­ing its strate­gies as part of the ant-crime thrust. Part of that, he said, was a height­ened pres­ence in "hot spots" and re­de­vel­op­ing lev­els of con­fi­dence among the pub­lic. "But we can't be every­where all the time and crime would oc­cur," Maun­dy said. He al­so as­sured that rogue el­e­ments in the De­fence Force would be ei­ther boot­ed out or if found guilty by the court, serve jail time.

FLASH­BACK

On the heels of the mur­ders two pan­men last week a joint army/po­lice pres­ence was in­sti­tut­ed at through­out the na­tion's pan the­atres. Hen­ry Cyrus, 55, a fa­ther of one and founder of Uni-Stars, of Pash­ley Street, Laven­tille, was killed last Wednes­day dur­ing a dri­ve-by shoot­ing. Cyrus, a for­mer au­to-me­chan­ic at Ser­vol School, Beetham Gar­dens, was shot dead at the Uni-Stars pa­n­yard in Laven­tille. The pa­n­yard is lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Mac Al­lis­ter Street and the Old St Joseph Road.

Wen­dell Joseph, a 23-year-old pan­man of Old St Joseph Road, was al­so shot dead last Sun­day in Barataria.