South­ern Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers are say­ing sev­er­al vi­o­lent in­ci­dents at the Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed plant at Mayo dur­ing the past two days came as a di­rect re­sult of the de­ci­sion to with­draw off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cers from the strike camp. "We now have to draw from four to five po­lice sta­tions to send a crew to the strike camp at Mayo and Clax­ton Bay, when we could have utilised off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cers in the past," a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

Not­ing that there was al­ready a short­age of of­fi­cers in the di­vi­sion, he said: "This is cre­at­ing a fur­ther strain on our al­ready short re­sources and it is giv­ing the union an up­per hand. The union want small po­lice pres­ence so they could do what they want." The of­fi­cer con­firmed that two of the tyres from one of their ve­hi­cles used to es­cort work­ers to the Mayo plant were al­so punc­tured by spikes plant­ed in the ground lead­ing to the en­trance.