Yvonne Ba­boolal

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has agreed to as­sign ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cers to the Rapid Re­sponse Unit to pa­trol along­side the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to the unit.So said In­spec­tor Michael Seales, sec­re­tary of the Po­lice Sec­ond Di­vi­sion As­so­ci­a­tion.He said mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion and the min­is­ter met to sort out the mat­ter and came to an agree­ment that reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers should man­age the Rapid Re­sponse Unit, com­pris­ing SRPs.

The de­ci­sion fol­lows an in­ci­dent where a Glen­coe man, Naim Dean, was shot and killed on April 11 dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice.Seales added: "Reg­u­lar of­fi­cers will al­so aug­ment the RRU staff so it will not be a sit­u­a­tion where in­ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cers are the first re­spon­ders. It was the as­so­ci­a­tion which sug­gest­ed the idea as an in­ter­im mea­sure."The min­is­ter agreed and we ap­plaud him for tak­ing the bull by the horns and mak­ing such a tough de­ci­sion."

Seales said Grif­fith al­so wel­comed the sug­ges­tion to re-eval­u­ate the train­ing SRPs re­ceived."I am quite sure the min­is­ter would have put sys­tems in place for sim­u­la­tions of re­al life sit­u­a­tions RRU of­fi­cers may en­counter," he said.The as­so­ci­a­tion, con­tend­ing the killing of Dean hap­pened be­cause of a lack of prop­er train­ing of the SRPs, de­mand­ed a ceas­ing of its op­er­a­tions and a re-eval­u­a­tion of the train­ing of its of­fi­cers.

Grif­fith coun­tered the RRU was one of the most suc­cess­ful po­lice ini­tia­tives over the last ten years and said he would not shut down a whole unit over one in­ci­dent. He agreed, how­ev­er, that train­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers across the board was need­ed.Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent In­spec­tor Anand Rame­sar, com­ment­ing yes­ter­day on claims of the RRU's suc­cess, said: "The min­is­ter might be right. There has not been much suc­cess with any po­lice ini­tia­tive over the last ten years."

Rame­sar said re­tired po­lice of­fi­cers who were brought back to head units "should stay home."Asked why they should stay home, he said: "There are peo­ple to fill the po­si­tions and you are not see­ing val­ue for mon­ey."Rame­sar said the SRP Act did not al­low SRPs to work in­de­pen­dent­ly of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice but as aux­il­lary staff."The as­so­ci­a­tion is very clear SRPs must be su­per­vised by TTPS of­fi­cers," he said.

The SRPs were called out to form the units af­ter Grif­fith said in No­vem­ber last year there was a short­age of po­lice of­fi­cers.Rame­sar said there were now 7,000 po­lice of­fi­cers and 2,500 SRPs in the Po­lice Ser­vice."To­geth­er, this is the largest amount of of­fi­cers ever in the his­to­ry of T&T," he added.Told of a reg­u­lar com­plaints by mem­bers of the pub­lic that they were usu­al­ly told there were not enough of­fi­cers at a sta­tion to check out their re­ports, Rame­sar said: "That's a man­age­ment is­sue."