An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.oaul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has not­ed the ex­tra­or­di­nary ex­am­ples of courage and ser­vice that have been dis­played by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing his first 100 days on the job – and he is en­cour­ag­ing them to con­tin­ue act­ing with ho­n­our and pride.

He ex­pressed the sen­ti­ments as he ad­dressed of­fi­cers dur­ing a com­men­da­tion and pro­mo­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day. A to­tal of 33 of­fi­cers were recog­nised, with 30 re­ceiv­ing com­men­da­tions and three be­ing pro­mot­ed.

Gue­var­ro said, “I have seen of­fi­cers step in­to dan­ger with­out hes­i­ta­tion, re­solve con­flict with wis­dom and up­lift com­mu­ni­ties with com­pas­sion. I have seen the best of what polic­ing can be, and imag­ine we are not done yet. We go­ing right down till we lie down.”

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the group of of­fi­cers present, he urged them to con­tin­ue turn­ing dif­fi­cult mo­ments in­to defin­ing ones.

“You have an­swered my call to re­move dead­ly weapons from our streets, and place those re­spon­si­ble for them be­hind bars and in court,” he said.

Not­ing that com­men­da­tions had to be earned and were not hand­ed out light­ly, the top cop said the re­cip­i­ents em­bod­ied the val­ues of in­tegri­ty, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and re­silience. Com­ment­ing on the is­sue of pro­mo­tions with­in the TTPS, which has been stymied due to on­go­ing le­gal ac­tions, the Com­mis­sion­er re­vealed, “We are now util­is­ing the resid­ual list that ex­ists, that have not gone the way of the court. The ma­jor­i­ty of all po­lice pro­mo­tions right now are stymied be­cause of mat­ters be­fore the courts. So as soon as those mat­ters are de­ter­mined in the court, we will be able to con­tin­ue in our process­es.”

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, al­so ap­pealed to of­fi­cers to con­tin­ue the good work.

To those pro­mot­ed, he ad­vised, “The or­gan­i­sa­tion it­self is go­ing through a trans­for­ma­tion and you are part of that trans­for­ma­tion. A lot is ex­pect­ed of you and that ex­pec­ta­tion means more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. More re­spon­si­bil­i­ty means more sac­ri­fice, and with more sac­ri­fice, it means the de­liv­ery must equate in terms of what you do.”