Shal­iza Has­sanali

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams says the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) can­not con­tin­ue to prac­tice re­ac­tionary polic­ing and a proac­tionary mod­el is be­ing worked on. In his re­marks at a crime sym­po­sium at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, on Fri­day, Williams said fear of crime is cre­at­ing a lev­el of paral­y­sis in the coun­try, so polic­ing must have fo­cus, with di­rec­tive pa­trols in ar­eas where there is con­cen­tra­tion of crime.

"Polic­ing to­day must be based on smart polic­ing. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, polic­ing in T&T has been built around a re­ac­tionary mod­el. Po­lice are in sta­tions. Peo­ple re­port crime and po­lice go out and in­ves­ti­gate," he said. Williams said the TTPS is aim­ing to be­come more proac­tive, with po­lice of­fi­cers dis­patched to com­mu­ni­ties where they can iden­ti­fy and pre­vent crimes.

"Gone are the days where the Po­lice Ser­vice would po­lice by just send­ing out po­lice across the board," he said. "Waste of re­sources be­cause rou­tine pa­trols will not max­imise the use of your lim­it­ed re­sources." Williams did not say if the TTPS will con­tin­ue with the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive in­tro­duced by for­mer CoP Dwayne Gibbs, who re­signed last week. Many have crit­i­cised Gibbs' ini­tia­tive.

The TTPS, Williams said, need­ed to em­brace new de­vel­op­ments. In­stead, Williams spoke about ev­i­dence-based polic­ing that fo­cus­es on ob­tain­ing sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence. He ex­plained,?"It us­es re­search to guide polic­ing prac­tice." Williams said while cit­i­zens had a per­cep­tion that crime is in­creas­ing, cur­rent crime sta­tis­tics are no worse than 2011.

"And 2011 had less crime than 2010," he said. Williams said one of the chal­lenges for the TTPS is de­tec­tion, which falls in­to three ar­eas-catch­ing crim­i­nals in the act, ob­tain­ing ev­i­dence from wit­ness­es and by sci­en­tif­ic means. Of the three ar­eas, he said, the most dom­i­nant is pros­e­cut­ing through wit­ness ev­i­dence. "T&T suf­fers in a se­ri­ous way in that area to fa­cil­i­tate the de­tec­tion of of­fences. No wit­ness...no solv­ing of crime."

He said the biggest hur­dle in get­ting wit­ness­es to come for­ward is the low lev­el of trust and con­fi­dence in the TTPS. He said if that can be im­proved, mil­lions will be saved in the "pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al process." The act­ing CoP said it will take a big ef­fort for peo­ple to de­vel­op trust and con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers to solve crimes.