Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams yes­ter­day urged his troops not to be de­terred in their fight against crime.His call came af­ter one of their own, Sgt Hay­den Man­war­ring, was left fight­ing for his life af­ter be­ing shot in the chest in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.Man­war­ring, 43, of Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas, re­mained ward­ed in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal last evening.

An­oth­er of­fi­cer, PC Nico­las Phillip, was al­so shot in the en­counter and was ward­ed in sta­ble con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal with a wound to the right arm and a graze to the head last night.The of­fi­cers are both as­signed to the San Fer­nan­do CID.Yes­ter­day, Williams, in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, said yes­ter­day's shoot­ing "has re­flect­ed the lev­el of risk of­fi­cers are con­front­ed by on a dai­ly ba­sis."

He said he want­ed to en­cour­age them to per­se­vere in the face of these is­sues and "chal­lenges that con­front us and con­tin­ue to do all that is nec­es­sary to pro­vide the so­ci­ety with safe­ty."At this point in time I ask them to pray for our broth­er...God be with him as he un­der­goes surgery and that he re­cov­er in a speedy man­ner," he said.

One Big Crime Day

Williams said he was told the two were shot in the line of du­ty when they con­front­ed sus­pects at Em­ba­cadere, San Fer­nan­do."The thing is, of­fi­cers are al­ways in life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions every day," he said."We put our lives in threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions to pro­vide cit­i­zens with lev­els of pro­tec­tion...It is a high-risk job," he said.The act­ing CoP said he knew Man­war­ing per­son­al­ly, and he was an ex­em­plary of­fi­cer.

"He is an out­stand­ing of­fi­cer who has con­tin­ued to take the fight to the crim­i­nals every day," he said. "It is painful when­ev­er one of my of­fi­cers is in­jured in the line of du­ty...My prayers are out there with him." Williams added that mem­bers of the pub­lic did not un­der­stand the risks po­lice faced every day to pro­tect so­ci­ety."Re­al­ly, it is just so tough to be out there putting your life on the line on a dai­ly ba­sis and cit­i­zens do not recog­nise the risk," he said.

"Peo­ple have to start to re­alise that risk fac­tor...I know that is the job we chose and no one has cho­sen it for us but we are com­mit­ting our lives on a dai­ly ba­sis."Yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, said his mem­bers were deeply con­cern over the shoot­ing."Many of­fi­cers are hop­ing and pray­ing that these two brave of­fi­cers re­cov­er suc­cess­ful­ly," he said.

"In­stances like these sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­mind us that every day, po­lice of­fi­cers leave home know­ing that their jobs con­tin­u­ous­ly re­quire that they face life-threat­en­ing cir­cum­stances with­out warn­ing,"Rame­sar called on Williams to en­sure the two re­ceived the best care at hos­pi­tal. He said he hoped yes­ter­day's shoot­ing would trig­ger Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to make good on his promise to build a hos­pi­tal for ser­vice­men un­der his min­istry.

Rame­sar said the as­so­ci­a­tion would of­fer pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices to rel­a­tives of the of­fi­cers.