The Rapid Re­sponse Unit promised in Au­gust is now a re­al­i­ty, with an ex­pe­ri­enced po­lice of­fi­cer, re­cent­ly-re­tired deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son, at its helm and a fleet of colour­ful ve­hi­cles to po­lice the roads of T&T.Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the launch of the first phase of the project, which will as­sign 80 of­fi­cers and close to two dozen spe­cial­ly-mod­i­fied ve­hi­cles to op­er­ate in the West­ern, North­ern and North East­ern Di­vi­sions, in align­ment with re­cent surges in crime sta­tis­tics.

It's a project that has ar­rived at a crit­i­cal junc­ture in the coun­try's im­pa­tience with demon­strat­ed po­lice in­abil­i­ty to re­spond to crime.It's no sur­prise, then, to find ad­ver­tise­ments trum­pet­ing the ar­rival and ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the unit, but they may in­ad­ver­tent­ly be send­ing the wrong mes­sage.Clear­ly, some­one thought that the idea of the unit might best be con­veyed by ranks of parked ve­hi­cles.

But what cit­i­zens have long been ask­ing of of­fi­cers is qual­i­ty and speed, not quan­ti­ty when the need for po­lice in­ter­ven­tion aris­es. That's a re­al need that the Rapid Re­sponse Unit is in po­si­tion, as the an­tic­i­pat­ed first re­spon­ders, to de­liv­er. The apoc­ryphal com­plaint about po­lice re­sponse, that of­fi­cers have no cars in an emer­gency, isn't ac­tu­al­ly solved by hav­ing more cars, it's best ad­dressed by cul­ti­vat­ing a cus­tomer-first at­ti­tude.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers