Hors­es and po­lice of­fi­cers will pa­trol the streets of Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go, from Sat­ur­day and the usu­al fire­works on In­de­pen­dence night will take place, ac­cord­ing to ACP To­ba­go, Franklyn Ed­wards. He said the Po­lice Mount­ed Branch in St James will as­sign two hors­es to To­ba­go and these will be a pre­cur­sor to hors­es com­ing to the is­land in the long term, as well as in­tro­duc­tion of a full ca­nine squad to the is­land to as­sist po­lice of­fi­cers in in­ves­ti­ga­tions. ACP Ed­wards said the hors­es would re­turn to St James to be part of the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade on Wednes­day.

He said al­though there was no cur­few in To­ba­go, the is­land still fell un­der the state of emer­gency reg­u­la­tions which gave the se­cu­ri­ty forces pow­ers to search and de­tain. He said 17 peo­ple were de­tained dur­ing ex­er­cis­es through­out the is­land on Thurs­day night and these ex­er­cis­es would con­tin­ue. The top To­ba­go cop was speak­ing to re­porters at the end of a one-hour emer­gency meet­ing of the To­ba­go Tourism Stand­ing Com­mit­tee sum­moned by THA Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don at the Blue Haven Ho­tel. Lon­don told re­porters that "we are def­i­nite­ly not in a pan­ic mode" and said he was com­fort­ed at what tran­spired at the meet­ing.

THA Tourism and Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Os­wald Williams said be­cause of the state of emer­gency, To­ba­go now faced se­ri­ous chal­lenges in terms of do­mes­tic tourism. He said be­cause of the change in the sched­ule of the fer­ry ser­vice, an es­ti­mat­ed 4,000 will not be able to come to To­ba­go over the next few days. He added that this would be com­pound­ed by the des­ig­nat­ed car­go ves­sel, the War­rior Spir­it, be­ing tak­en out of ser­vice be­tween Sep­tem­ber 3 and 16. Williams said the As­sem­bly would con­tin­ue its ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing pro­gramme to en­cour­age in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors to To­ba­go de­spite the state of emer­gency.