JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says the an­nounce­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter that the coun­try would soon have 30 po­lice-army posts was agreed to dur­ing a meet­ing with the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

Ben­jamin said the plan will not be a bur­den on po­lice of­fi­cers as they will be sup­port­ed by mem­bers of the De­fence Force.

He said the plan is about in­creas­ing po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty cou­pled with bet­ter ac­com­mo­da­tions for po­lice of­fi­cers who may not have that at the var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions.

“It is al­so hav­ing the posts close by so that per­sons can make re­ports eas­i­er. So there is more good that can come out of this than neg­a­tive. I think that we need to al­low things to take its course. As the na­tion and as the po­lice ser­vice, we seek to re­al­ly up­grade the stan­dard of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and we need to give it a chance so that we can see the fruit­ful­ness that comes out of it.”

While the move is be­ing con­demned by some who say it is a back­ward step, Ben­jamin said the move is re­turn­ing the po­lice to the fun­da­men­tals of polic­ing, which is hav­ing a pres­ence in com­mu­ni­ties.

“We are go­ing to take it phase by phase, and we are go­ing to go back to the ba­sics. The ba­sics will be about crime pre­ven­tion, crime sup­pres­sion, crime de­tec­tion, and at the end, crime con­vic­tion. And that is what we’re go­ing to be us­ing to en­sure that we have a holis­tic ap­proach. What we’re do­ing is bring­ing the po­lice clos­er to the com­mu­ni­ty so that there can be faster re­sponse and greater ac­cess and avail­abil­i­ty for the po­lice.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TTPS So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion head ASP Ish­mael Pitt wel­comed the ini­tia­tive, say­ing he sup­port­ed any mea­sure that would con­tribute to crime fight­ing.

Asked about the po­ten­tial in­crease in the over­time bill as­so­ci­at­ed with staffing the 30 posts, Pitt said no cost should be spared when it comes to sav­ing lives.

Like Ben­jamin, he said po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty is one of the most fun­da­men­tal as­pects of polic­ing and that the new posts, along with in­creased pa­trols, would help strength­en pub­lic safe­ty.

While both of­fi­cers are hail­ing the ini­tia­tive, for­mer top cop Gary Grif­fith says it makes no sense as it is a step back­ward.

He in­stead called for an emer­gency re­sponse unit that can ad­dress dis­tress calls with the use of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to lo­cate the near­est po­lice ve­hi­cle to the dis­tress call.

He was sup­port­ed by re­tired lieu­tenant com­man­der in the De­fence Force and po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance Nor­man Din­di­al.

Din­di­al not on­ly ques­tioned the lo­gis­tics of im­ple­ment­ing the pro­gramme, in­clu­sive of man­pow­er is­sues, but al­so how the project will come to an end.