Kali­fa Clyne

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams yes­ter­day an­nounced a new strate­gic plan for the Po­lice Ser­vice cen­ter­ing around a "hotspot polic­ing" ini­tia­tive which was pi­lot­ed last year.The new strate­gic plan, which pro­vides a new mis­sion and vi­sion for the ser­vice, would be im­ple­ment­ed this year and a pi­lot project had al­ready had a 41 per cent suc­cess rate, he said.

Williams an­nounced the plan while mak­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at a three-day sym­po­sium, called Prayers Plus, aimed at find­ing so­lu­tions for crime, at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's, yes­ter­day.He ad­dressed the au­di­ence with a rep­e­ti­tion of news that se­ri­ous crime was trend­ing down­wards de­spite high lev­els of mur­der."For 2014 we have had a record high in the re­cov­ery of firearms. It still is not stop­ping the mur­ders but over 280 firearms have been re­cov­ered in un­der five months," Williams said.

He out­lined the four strate­gic goals of the po­lice: To re­duce and de­tect crime, to in­crease safe­ty on roads and in pub­lic spaces, to es­tab­lish cit­i­zen-cen­tered ser­vice and to strength­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion.He said the ser­vice's top pri­or­i­ties mov­ing for­ward would be mur­ders and vi­o­lent crime, gun re­cov­ery, po­lice con­duct and cus­tomer ser­vice.

"We have to move from a re­ac­tive to proac­tive method of polic­ing. Peo­ple come to po­lice sta­tions to make a re­port and some­times if an of­fi­cer has time they will take the re­port. We want them to go out in the com­mu­ni­ty," he said.Williams al­so said the po­lice were mov­ing for­ward with ev­i­dence-based hotspot polic­ing, which they ex­per­i­ment­ed with last year.

The ex­per­i­ment was done us­ing 40 po­lice sta­tions in Trinidad and showed de­creas­es in crime in the ar­eas which used the hotspot polic­ing method of in­creased pa­trols and po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty in com­mu­ni­ties, he not­ed.He added: "The dif­fer­ence in terms of crimes com­mit­ted in these ex­per­i­men­tal po­lice sta­tions and the con­trol group was a 41 per cent de­crease. "Hotspot polic­ing can work. This ex­per­i­ment has demon­strat­ed that it has worked in this coun­try. Crime start­ed to go down in the ex­per­i­men­tal sta­tions."

Fifty of the 77 po­lice sta­tions in T&T would ac­ti­vate hotspot polic­ing this year, he said.Williams said once that yields pos­i­tive re­sults the re­main­ing 27 sta­tions would ac­ti­vate the method."We are tak­ing this from a sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach and we can dri­ve crime down­ward," he added.Williams said in terms of the move­ment of drugs, a na­tion­al dis­cus­sion on fix­ing the "porous bor­ders" was need­ed.

Adding to state­ments made by Chief of De­fence Staff Ma­jor Gen Ken­rick Ma­haraj ear­li­er that vul­ner­a­ble points of en­try were not the on­ly prob­lem in terms of the drug trade, Williams said stronger mea­sures need­ed to be in place at ports."We don't have con­tain­er scan­ners at the Port of Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas. Every­body knows that. Scan­ners have been ac­quired but are not yet op­er­a­tional," he said.