Rhon­dor Dowlat

On the heels of the mur­der of nine-year-old Em­manuel Cy­on Paul and the in­crease of crime in La Ro­maine, a po­lice mo­bile unit will be erect­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty to­mor­row.

This was dis­closed yes­ter­day by act­ing Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the South­ern Di­vi­sion, Ade­line St Louis-Pes­nell, at the week­ly po­lice brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.

St Louis-Pes­nell said the in­struc­tion to set up the post was giv­en re­cent­ly by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Harold Phillip.

"It would be vis­i­ble to res­i­dents and they will have a 24-hour po­lice pres­ence in the com­mu­ni­ty," she said.

Asked if the po­lice had made any dent in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, all she would say was that in­ves­ti­ga­tions were still on­go­ing.

"We will, how­ev­er, leave no stone un­turned as we seek to bring the per­pe­tra­tor to jus­tice," St Louis-Pes­nell said.

She, how­ev­er, used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to an­nounce a gen­er­al re­duc­tion in crime in all of the 11 po­lice sta­tions in the di­vi­sion.

When asked about the mur­der rate and why there were no com­par­i­son fig­ures giv­en, St Louis-Pes­nell ad­mit­ted that they were still strug­gling with the mur­der rate.

"It con­tin­ues to pose a chal­lenge for the of­fi­cers but I can as­sure law-abid­ing cit­i­zens that we will be im­ple­ment­ing strate­gies in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er units in the Po­lice Ser­vice to en­sure that there is a re­duc­tion in crime," she said.

It was al­so dis­closed that 115 guns, in­clud­ing shot­guns, pis­tols and ri­fles, have been re­cov­ered, in ad­di­tion ot 6,590 as­sort­ed am­mu­ni­tion re­cov­ered and seized in Pi­paro on Au­gust 5 and 1,691 in Mon Re­pos on Au­gust 15.

Asked if the South­ern Di­vi­sion was un­der-staffed and un­der-re­sourced, just like the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion (claims made by Cen­tral Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and of­fi­cers), St Louis-Pes­nell replied:

"We have im­ple­ment­ed com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils through­out the di­vi­sion, in­clu­sive of all stake­hold­ers, re­tired of­fi­cers and of­fi­cers on ac­tive du­ties, to try to get to the source of what is oc­cur­ring in the com­mu­ni­ties, so we are max­imis­ing our re­sources in the scourge of crime that's plagu­ing the so­ci­ety.

"We have in­ten­si­fied our ap­proach in plan­ning strate­gies to suit the re­sources and every of­fi­cer is in sync with oth­er of­fi­cers and our goals."