Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams met yes­ter­day with the heads of all polic­ing di­vi­sions for close to three and a half hours to dis­cuss new strate­gies to deal with crime. He was al­so ex­pect­ed to meet with Chief of De­fence Staff Brig Ken­rick Ma­haraj on an arrange­ment to deal specif­i­cal­ly with an up­surge of mur­ders in Laven­tille. Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter a pro­mo­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Williams said "I want to tell the pub­lic that as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, the po­lice ser­vice has tak­en its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as se­ri­ous as we can to ad­dress crime in the coun­try. "We are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go can be re­turned to that safe and se­cure place that I know and ex­pe­ri­enced as a young per­son grow­ing up, and oth­ers would have ex­pe­ri­enced, but that some young per­sons in so­ci­ety may nev­er have ex­pe­ri­enced," Williams said.

Re­peat­ing his ear­li­er sug­ges­tion that me­dia per­son­nel should in­form se­nior of­fi­cials of their in­ten­tion to go in­to ar­eas con­sid­ered high-risk, Williams said, "As a po­lice of­fi­cer, I can­not tell per­son­nel from the me­dia not to go to those high-risk ar­eas to cov­er sto­ries. I can­not tell you that. You have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cov­er what­ev­er leads you would have re­ceived and cov­er dif­fer­ent sto­ries. "What I would tell you is that if there is a need for you to cov­er a sto­ry in an area which you be­lieve is in a high-risk area, and you in­form the po­lice de­part­ment that you are go­ing to that area and you would like to have a polic­ing pres­ence in that area, we will be seek­ing to pro­vide that polic­ing pres­ence," Williams said. Asked if this sug­ges­tion, which was pub­lished in the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, had re­sult­ed in any re­quests be­ing made yes­ter­day af­ter two mur­ders on Sun­day night in Bev­er­ly Hills and Clifton Hill, both of which are in Laven­tille, Williams said, "I can't say if the me­dia made any re­quests to­day (yes­ter­day) for as­sis­tance to go in­to high-risk ar­eas."

Williams how­ev­er said the po­lice will not be pro­vid­ing the me­dia with any body­guards. "We want to min­imise the risk that any cit­i­zen faces out there and those that the me­dia al­so face out there. Our ul­ti­mate aim is to make the coun­try safer," he said. He said steps were be­ing tak­en to ad­dress the long stand­ing crime prob­lem in Laven­tille. "It will take a spe­cial ef­fort by the po­lice de­part­ment and all oth­er law-en­force­ment agen­cies, but it is our in­ten­tion to pro­vide Laven­tille with that spe­cial ef­fort to ad­dress the prob­lem." Williams said a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach was be­ing em­ployed. Asked whether a new pat­tern of vi­o­lent crime was emerg­ing, in that rel­a­tives of al­leged gang mem­bers were now be­ing tar­get­ed, Williams said "There is noth­ing new with the pat­tern of crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go right now. "We are con­front­ed with a sit­u­a­tion where the firearm is the weapon of choice for the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders. Be­tween 80 and 85 per cent of mur­ders are com­mit­ted with firearms and that has been in the past and al­so in the present." En­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to give in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice about il­le­gal weapons by phon­ing in in­for­ma­tion to Crime Stop­pers, 555 or 999, Williams said, "As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, the po­lice ser­vice is do­ing every­thing to re­duce the num­ber of firearms out there il­le­gal­ly. That is one of our main thrusts, to re­cov­er as many il­le­gal firearms as we can."