Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has warned po­lice that they are run­ning out of ex­cus­es in their bat­tle against crim­i­nals.

Au­gus­tine made the com­ment yes­ter­day at the launch of the na­tion­al Ac­tive Di­rect­ed Grid Pa­trol sys­tem at To­ba­go In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, Sig­nal Hill.

The ini­tia­tive is the brain­child of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, who has been work­ing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) since Jan­u­ary.

The sys­tem stream­lines com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Fu­sion Cen­tre to Di­vi­sion­al Com­mand Cen­tres and then to of­fi­cers on the ground.

Ja­cob said the re­sult would be a more ef­fi­cient po­lice force, swifter re­al-time re­spons­es and a more da­ta-dri­ven ser­vice in the day-to-day op­er­a­tions.

He said the soft­ware al­lows ac­cess to fa­cial recog­ni­tion, ve­hi­cle recog­ni­tion, CCTV footage, elec­tron­ic an­kle mon­i­tor­ing and can even in­clude body cam­era footage.

Au­gus­tine re­cent­ly crit­i­cised To­ba­go po­lice of­fi­cers, even of­fer­ing to pay for their train­ing us­ing re­sources al­lo­cat­ed to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty leader said he was pleased with the launch as it sig­nalled an in­tent by the po­lice to mod­ernise the ser­vice.

He re­called that To­ba­go was grap­pling with its high­est mur­der rate in 2024, com­pound­ed by an ab­sence of co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the op­er­a­tions cen­tre in Trinidad and of­fi­cers on the is­land.

“I am heart­ened to hear from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) this morn­ing that this sys­tem will al­low for ef­fort­less in­te­gra­tion and for of­fi­cers on the ground in To­ba­go to have ac­cess to da­ta in re­al time, with­out hav­ing to call some­one from Port-of-Spain.”

He said polic­ing in the Caribbean had been de­pen­dent on of­fi­cers be­ing at the right place at the right time.

How­ev­er, he said crim­i­nals are be­com­ing more so­phis­ti­cat­ed, and law en­force­ment need­ed to stay ahead.

“Crim­i­nal net­works are be­com­ing more mo­bile. The meth­ods used to com­mit crimes are evolv­ing rapid­ly. Law en­force­ment must there­fore evolve even faster,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the new sys­tem pro­vides re­al-time sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, im­proved traf­fic mon­i­tor­ing, sup­ports de­ploy­ment of of­fi­cers and strength­ens rapid-re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

He said the TTPS can now act swift­ly, in­tel­li­gent­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.

“Which means the TTPS is run­ning out of ex­cus­es for why we can’t solve (crime).”

Au­gus­tine said se­cured com­mu­ni­ties mean a safer To­ba­go, which is in­te­gral for a tourism-dri­ven econ­o­my.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Ja­cob ex­plained that pa­trols are the lifeblood of polic­ing. He said once the road­ways are con­trolled, il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty can be cur­tailed.

He cred­it­ed the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to con­trol all ac­cess to Port-of-Spain for the re­cap­ture of pris­on­ers who es­caped in the 2015 Port-of-Spain jail break.

Ja­cob said train­ing is cru­cial to max­imise the po­ten­tial of the sys­tem, adding that the sys­tem is as ef­fec­tive as the peo­ple who use it.

He said there will be greater ac­count­abil­i­ty and su­per­vi­sion of pa­trols while al­so pro­mot­ing a chain of com­mand.

Ja­cob said, “We are not say­ing the sys­tem was not be­ing used in the past, but for ma­jor spe­cialised in­ves­ti­ga­tions, for in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing. The whole idea now is to bring it down for the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of the TTPS.”

CoP Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was ex­treme­ly pleased with the launch, say­ing it would help him max­imise his lim­it­ed re­sources.

“En­sur­ing that po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty is not on­ly con­stant, but re­as­sur­ing to the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens while serv­ing as a clear de­ter­rent to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.”

He said the ini­tia­tive was de­lib­er­ate and struc­tured fol­low­ing the place­ment of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre un­der the man­age­ment of the TTPS.

“To­geth­er we are build­ing a po­lice ser­vice that is not on­ly re­ac­tive but is an­tic­i­pa­to­ry,” he said.