Cherisse Moe

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs has called on new­ly-ap­point­ed es­tate con­sta­bles of the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) to part­ner with the Po­lice Ser­vice to help tack­le crime. Thir­ty trainees, among them 11 women, of­fi­cial­ly be­came es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing an in­duc­tion train­ing grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James, on Wednes­day evening. The of­fi­cers made his­to­ry by be­com­ing the first batch of re­cruits to be trained by the Po­lice Acad­e­my and join the ranks of the state-owned com­pa­ny. They now join 485 grad­u­ates from the Port Au­thor­i­ty, the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, Traf­fic War­dens and Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice.

The of­fi­cers were schooled in var­i­ous as­pects of polic­ing, in­clud­ing crim­i­nal law, laws of ev­i­dence and pro­ce­dure, po­lice du­ties, traf­fic du­ties, the Sup­ple­men­tal Po­lice Act, and the use of firearms. De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Gibbs said their train­ing would en­sure the of­fi­cers were ready to give crit­i­cal as­sis­tance to the po­lice. "You must forge a bond with your fel­low of­fi­cers, be­cause there is strength in num­bers," Gibbs said. "You have to be re­spon­si­ble and ac­count­able for your ac­tions. It may not al­ways be easy, but you have been for­tu­nate enough to have had the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing trained from a rep­utable in­sti­tute such as the Po­lice Acad­e­my."

Say­ing a key com­po­nent of the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive was mak­ing the po­lice ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive, Gibbs al­so en­cour­aged the new of­fi­cers to lead by ex­am­ple. He said, "Now you will have to ap­ply your ser­vice ef­fec­tive­ly in a com­plex and dy­nam­ic en­vi­ron­ment." Gibbs said the pro­gramme was de­liv­ered through the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP), Law En­force­ment and Reg­u­la­to­ry Train­ing Pro­gramme Unit at the Po­lice Acad­e­my. Per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Isaac James, told the of­fi­cers their jobs had "on­ly just be­gun" and en­cour­aged them to take their tasks se­ri­ous­ly.