RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der has been ap­point­ed new head of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) and has promised to “bring a dif­fer­ence.”

Alexan­der’s ap­point­ment was an­nounced dur­ing yes­ter­day’s T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) week­ly me­dia brief­ing by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

Grif­fith al­so re­vealed for­mer head Mark Her­nan­dez was im­me­di­ate­ly sent on sus­pen­sion leave giv­en the charges laid against him.

Speak­ing im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment, Alexan­der said that SORT at this time re­quired ex­pe­ri­enced polic­ing and bring­ing the pub­lic clos­er, “be­cause we see what is hap­pen­ing now with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns and am­mu­ni­tion in our coun­try, we have to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. What we al­ready have, we tweak on it, we add to it to give the pub­lic that trust and con­fi­dence that all is well.”

Asked if he would still be the host of the TTPS’ show ‘Be­yond the Tape’, Alexan­der replied with a smirk, “Every­thing we do we must be ac­count­ed for. That is the sto­ry of the TTPS. That must not change.”

Asked what was the cri­te­ria in Alexan­der’s ap­point­ment, Grif­fith said he had his rea­sons.

“I am not here to give the CV of an in­di­vid­ual who is ap­point­ed in any po­si­tion in the TTPS. I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. I have to en­sure that the per­sons I see would be the most ap­pro­pri­ate to hold any po­si­tion and it’s not just Mr Alexan­der,” Grif­fith said.

“I have dozens of very good com­man­ders who I see have lead­er­ship skills and I will se­lect and rec­om­mend per­sons as I see fit to en­sure the bet­ter de­vel­op­ment of that unit.

“We need to en­sure we put some­one, that they have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to en­sure that he runs one of sev­er­al units that we have in a prop­er man­ner, and I have con­stant di­a­logue not just with SORT but with all the var­i­ous units...and they all have a big part to play. It has noth­ing to do with an in­di­vid­ual based on his pop­u­lar­i­ty.”

In 2019, as an in­spec­tor, Alexan­der faced an as­sault case to­geth­er with Con­sta­ble Shel­don Mires.

That case was lat­er dis­charged in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court on March 19 2019. The de­ci­sion was made by Mag­is­trate Naz­im Khan, who ruled that the State had been un­able to pro­ceed with hear­ing ev­i­dence in the case on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions in the past, and again, on March 19 2019.

As a re­sult, Alexan­der and Mires were told they were free to go.

Ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, SORT has been in­stru­men­tal and proven in­valu­able as one of the front­line units as­sist­ing this coun­try in safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

“It’s been the front­line unit to as­sist in se­cur­ing the na­tion and pro­tect­ing the na­tion.”

Grif­fith said from Sep­tem­ber 2018 to now, SORT had done the fol­low­ing: 550 ar­rests; 218 war­rants ex­e­cut­ed; 75 firearms re­cov­ered; hun­dreds of am­mu­ni­tion re­cov­ered; three hand grenades; 11 hostages res­cued; shut­ting down kid­nap­ping for ran­som, no mon­ey paid and kid­nap­pers be­ing held; pris­on­ers re­cap­tured; 145 peo­ple re­leased from hu­man traf­fick­ing; il­le­gal im­mi­grants be­ing freed; ve­hi­cles be­ing seized; over $25 mil­lion in funds be­ing re­cov­ered from il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties; over 700 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na seized and over 2.5 kilo­grammes of co­caine seized.

“Yet the per­cep­tion of SORT is an ag­gres­sive unit?” Gary rhetor­i­cal­ly asked.

He added that there have been 163 fa­tal po­lice shoot­ings in the last two and a half years, nine of which in­volved SORT.

“SORT is here to stay and will be big­ger and bet­ter and serve the pub­lic in an ef­fi­cient man­ner,” Grif­fith added.

In a brief in­ter­view with his co-host Mar­lan Hop­kin­son dur­ing last evening’s Be­yond The Tape show, Alexan­der said first on his agen­da is to re­mo­ti­vate his unit.

“A new di­rec­tion we’ll be look­ing at in terms of train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, not just train­ing in weapon tac­tics but train­ing on a whole in terms of dif­fer­ent as­pects of polic­ing. Then it gives some­one broad­er shoul­ders to tote the weight, mean­ing that we are not timid when com­ing to any sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing polic­ing that con­fronts us. We’ll be able to treat with every sit­u­a­tion, so that has to do with train­ing and de­vel­op­ment from oth­er agen­cies with­in the TTPS.”

Asked what are his tar­gets specif­i­cal­ly when it comes to crime, Alexan­der replied: “Gangs, gun, per­sons who im­port­ing guns, gang war­fare and when I say gangs, it speaks to those get­ting to­geth­er for home in­va­sions, rob­beries, shoot­ings and mur­ders. All those per­sons in that cir­cle ,but at the same time find­ing the way to pro­tect our cit­i­zens so they can sleep at night and go about their law­ful busi­ness by day.”

Asked if he had a mes­sage for the crim­i­nals and the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, Alexan­der asked for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to sup­port law en­force­ment.

“For the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, you con­tin­ue to chas­tise per­sons, shoot, rob, kill, home in­va­sion, rape and you want to do this on a dai­ly ba­sis, every night and then you must go home to your bed and sleep af­ter you dis­tress per­sons, make every one, some­times 10 vic­tims for the night, vic­tims of crime be­cause of your be­hav­iour and you want to go home to your bed and rest. I sug­gest that you sleep with your eyes open con­stant­ly be­cause you nev­er know when we will come knock­ing, or some­times we might not come through the front door, we might hit you a San­ta Claus and come through the roof.”