Geisha Kow­lessar

Plans are on the draw­ing board to al­low more po­lice to go home with po­lice-is­sued firearms. There are al­so dis­cus­sions on let­ting them go home with po­lice cars, said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. He was speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence af­ter meet­ing mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion at the Besson Street sta­tion in Port-of-Spain.

The sight of a po­lice ve­hi­cle would not on­ly act as a de­ter­rent to crime but al­so re­sult in rapid re­sponse on the part of the po­lice, he said. De­fend­ing this pro­pos­al, Warn­er said it was al­so the prac­tice in New York. "Why is it good for New York and it is bad for here? With the of­fi­cer go­ing home with the ve­hi­cle, he would be avail­able on call 24 hours. If he is off-du­ty you could still call him.

"The more you see po­lice of­fi­cers and ve­hi­cles the high­er the vis­i­bil­i­ty and the low­er the crime rate," Warn­er said. An in­crease in the cur­rent fleet was al­so in the mak­ing. "I wish I could have a fleet of cars in every street in Laven­tille. But it would be done...soon­er rather than lat­er." Asked whether the of­fi­cers would use the cars for their pri­vate busi­ness Warn­er said that could be pre­vent­ed with the GPS track­ing sys­tem.

Po­lice would al­so be in charge of en­sur­ing the ve­hi­cles were prop­er­ly main­tained, once al­lowed to take them home. "If the ve­hi­cle which the po­lice­man now has is his sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, he has to en­sure the ve­hi­cle is well-main­tained. There are ser­vice sta­tions in each di­vi­sion to which he can go to get re­pairs, but this is his ba­by.He must take care of it."

The method of deal­ing with sus­pen­sion of of­fi­cers was al­so dis­cussed. Warn­er said this was an­oth­er area in ur­gent need of re­view. "The max­i­mum a po­lice­man can be fined for an of­fence is ten days' pay. But that very of­fi­cer would go on sus­pen­sion with pay for some­times four years, dur­ing which time he gets his mas­ter's de­gree, he opens a busi­ness, opens a farm-all that and they give him ten days with­out pay and then put him back in­to the ser­vice. So the whole thing is cor­rupt," Warn­er said.