Mark Bas­sant

Po­lice of­fi­cers liv­ing in hotspots ar­eas and al­so work­ing there are now ex­press­ing con­cern for the safe­ty of their lives.

“There is, in fact, a con­cern by all of­fi­cers who are work­ing in the hot spots ar­eas in terms of the threats put in the pub­lic space and we will not cow­er as a body and we will not be in­tim­i­dat­ed by the threats,” said Gideon Dick­son, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice Wel­fare and So­cial As­so­ci­a­tion.

Fol­low­ing the shoot­ing of three men by po­lice in Mor­vant last Fri­day and the fiery protests in and around the cap­i­tal of Port-of-Spain on Tues­day, the threats on the lives of po­lice of­fi­cers have es­ca­lat­ed.

One lieu­tenant from the Ras­ta City gang al­so vowed that they would re­tal­i­ate against the po­lice. The grow­ing dis­sent and dis­dain for po­lice of­fi­cers are al­so em­bold­en­ing oth­er men to voice their threats on so­cial me­dia.

Dick­son speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via phone al­so ex­pressed grave con­cern over those of­fi­cers liv­ing in hot spot ar­eas and are a tar­get for crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“To the of­fi­cers who live in these ar­eas, I would want to say that your con­cerns are in fact gen­uine we at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el and the as­so­ci­a­tion will be en­gag­ing the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice as it re­lates to what se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures we can put in place for these of­fi­cers,” ex­plained Dick­son.

One po­lice con­sta­ble with ten years of ser­vice liv­ing in the Mor­vant area said, “Since that po­lice shoot­ing I hear­ing shots every night. This is the worst I have seen in a while. I ap­plied to the HDC and I am still await­ing as­sis­tance. I just have to be pray­ing, when I fin­ish work I go straight home and lock my­self in­side. These fel­las have a lot of fire­pow­er and I am still await­ing a re­sponse to get my per­son­al firearm,” said the of­fi­cer speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

A fe­male po­lice con­sta­ble liv­ing in the Laven­tille area said she was shak­en af­ter hear­ing about the fire­bomb­ing of her po­lice of­fi­cer’s car in the area on Tues­day night.

“In re­gards to the threats, I hon­est­ly be­lieve every law en­force­ment of­fi­cer should be en­ti­tled to a li­censed firearm and al­so have a safe liv­ing en­vi­ron­ment. Be­cause when off du­ty peo­ple do tar­get us with the job we do. Al­so, our fam­i­lies are at risk be­cause they are the first peo­ple they tend to use to get to us,” said the fe­male of­fi­cer.

Dick­son said they were hop­ing with the help of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the is­sue of get­ting the per­cent­age of hous­es for po­lice of­fi­cers in at-risk ar­eas in­creased.

Dick­son was con­fi­dent that de­spite the present threats the po­lice would con­tin­ue to do their job to the best of their abil­i­ty.

“We be­lieve that we are suf­fi­cient­ly trained and equipped to deal with what is out there and if need be we will re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly at all times,” he said.

Mean­while, the so­cial me­dia threats against po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ued yes­ter­day as one man in a video said, “You see that girl that the po­lice kill, hear what I telling some of all yuh eh, I not sleep­ing for the whole week till a po­lice dead!”

The man was mak­ing ref­er­ence to the shoot­ing death of Or­nel­la Greaves who was al­leged­ly shot and killed dur­ing a con­fronta­tion be­tween po­lice and pro­tes­tors dur­ing Tues­day’s fiery protests.

In an­oth­er so­cial me­dia video, a man’s voice in dark­ness is heard hurl­ing ob­scen­i­ties at the po­lice ser­vice and vow­ing to cut down po­lice of­fi­cers. “Gary yuh (sic) had to do some­thing about yuh (sic) cor­rupt­ed of­fi­cers, peo­ple go start to kill out all yuh (sic) in this life. Gary watch out eh yuh time cut­ting close yuh (sic) go get ah (sic) treat­ment like what Dana See­ta­hal get and even (ex­ple­tive) worse they will mash up yuh head bet­ter start to send se­cu­ri­ty for your chil­dren and them, this thing has worse to (ex­ple­tive) get, feel this is kicks, po­lice go­ing and start to dead.