Geisha Kow­lessar

From to­day, Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki will take up the port­fo­lio of head of Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al De­vel­op­ment. Ewats­ki was for­mer­ly in charge of Op­er­a­tions, a po­si­tion that will now be held by Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son. The name of the port­fo­lio of Crime and Sup­port has al­so been changed to In­ves­ti­ga­tion and from to­day it will be held by Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams.

Ex­plain­ing what his new ti­tle meant, Ewats­ki said it en­com­passed over­see­ing all the projects with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice in­clud­ing the con­tro­ver­sial 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing Ini­tia­tive. "There are a num­ber of projects that are ei­ther in the works right now or will be brought on­line as part of the trans­for­ma­tion process with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice," Ewats­ki said. He added the projects in­clud­ed ex­am­in­ing all as­pects of the or­gan­i­sa­tion which dealt with four main ob­jec­tives:

• Re­duce crime and vic­tim­i­sa­tion

• To be a mod­el of ef­fec­tive­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy

• To pro­vide a cit­i­zen-cen­tred ser­vice and

• To im­prove road­way safe­ty.

"So the ini­tia­tives which form part of our ob­jec­tives are based on that strate­gic plan. "The or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of the project would cross all the lines whether it be the in­ves­ti­ga­tion side of things or the op­er­a­tional side of things or the ad­min­is­tra­tive side of the Po­lice Ser­vice...they need to be co­or­di­nat­ed and it was felt best that we have a fo­cal point for all the de­vel­op­men­tal as­pects of the or­gan­i­sa­tion," Ewats­ki added.

Say­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice was just like any pri­vate agency, Ewats­ki said there was con­stant need for it to be re­freshed and adapt to changes in so­ci­ety. The DPI said he wel­comed his new post adding that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs felt it best to "change every­one around."

Dig­i­tal re­place­ment pro­gramme for E999

One of the ma­jor projects to be ful­ly re­vamped is the E999 sys­tem which would be made ful­ly com­put­erised. Ear­li­er this year, the Gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to a con­tract with the US-based firm Har­ris Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. "We are just wait­ing on a cou­ple de­tails of that con­tract. The pur­pose of it is to mod­ernise not on­ly the triple nine tele­phone sys­tem but al­so the abil­i­ty of the po­lice to re­spond more quick­ly.

"This would sup­port our new way of de­liv­er­ing our ser­vices un­der the 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing Ini­tia­tive and a much bet­ter ca­pa­bil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy where all our as­sets are to be able to dis­patch calls for ser­vice," Ewats­ki said. At a break­fast meet­ing with the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce held at West­moor­ings last Fri­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Har­ris Com­mu­ni­ca­tions were in the coun­try for two days and would re­turn over the next 18 months to fi­nalise the plan to re­vamp the E999 ser­vice.

Most crit­i­cal, how­ev­er, is the com­put­erised sys­tem which will be tied in­to the record man­age­ment sys­tem. When a call comes in, it would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be en­tered in­to the com­put­erised record sys­tem. "We would have record of what hap­pens to that in­for­ma­tion, com­pare it to the sys­tem we have in place now which is a pa­per-based process where some­times things get lost," Ewats­ki added.

He said with the com­put­erised sys­tem the en­try would nev­er be erased and checks could al­so be made to de­ter­mine whether or not rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion was fol­lowed up on. The sys­tem would al­so net­work with the Fire Ser­vice and am­bu­lance ser­vice. "E999 is not on­ly go­ing to deal with po­lice but al­so with fire re­spons­es and any type of emer­gen­cies as hap­pens right now with all our lines.

"Even though it is ded­i­cat­ed to po­lice some­times peo­ple phone to re­port a fire," Ewats­ki said. He said all the dis­patched calls would be done via wire­less da­ta trans­mis­sion mak­ing it in­stan­ta­neous." "Those calls would be dis­patched to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, whether po­lice, fire or all de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stance."

Con­tem­po­rary polic­ing

Po­lice sta­tions un­der the 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing Ini­tia­tive com­prise po­lice ser­vice cen­tres which op­er­ate from 9 am to 9 pm and de­ploy­ment cen­tres which open 24 hours. In West­ern Di­vi­sion, Ewats­ki said the Four Roads and the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tions were now po­lice ser­vice cen­tres while the St James, Mar­aval and West End Po­lice Sta­tions were de­ploy­ment cen­tres as they re­mained open on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Main­tain­ing that the sta­tions were not be­ing "closed down" Ewats­ki said: "We're not clos­ing down po­lice sta­tions...clos­ing the doors and walk­ing away. "Our po­lice sta­tions we are re­nam­ing as po­lice ser­vice cen­tres...they are still open 12 hours a day, 9 am to 9 pm. "Our study shows that's when the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple would use those fa­cil­i­ties," Ewats­ki said. He said when the cen­tres are closed there are pa­trol ve­hi­cles ser­vic­ing those ar­eas.

"So they are get­ting a high­er lev­el of vis­i­bil­i­ty and a high­er de­gree of re­sponse from that pa­trol unit in that vicin­i­ty. "We are study­ing very close­ly where we can lim­it the hours of some of these po­lice sta­tions." He said a di­vi­sion is bro­ken in­to sec­tors and of­fi­cers are de­ployed to pa­trol ac­cord­ing to those sec­tors. He said if calls came in from oth­er sec­tors, pa­trol units would be sent to that area with­in that di­vi­sion.

Apart from pa­trols, there are oth­er sup­port mech­a­nisms in each di­vi­sion in­clud­ing tac­ti­cal units. On whether he be­lieved all sta­tions should in­stead re­main opened for 24 hours, Ewats­ki in­sist­ed: "That is the plan and that is the plan in place right now."

Oth­er ini­tia­tives

Oth­er projects in­clud­ed ex­am­in­ing ar­eas to de­ter­mine whether they were ful­ly func­tion­al in­clud­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. "We are look­ing to see whether we are op­er­at­ing at the peak lev­el. "It is no sur­prise that our solv­abil­i­ty rates have been his­tor­i­cal­ly low.

We are look­ing to see what are the rea­sons for that," Ewats­ki said, ques­tion­ing whether the low rate of solv­ing crime "means that we need to re­struc­ture some of those units. Do we need to pro­vide more train­ing and de­vel­op­ment for our po­lice of­fi­cers? Those things are all be­ing ex­am­ined."