Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says a com­bi­na­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and per­son­nel has so far worked for the Car­ni­val sea­son mak­ing it one of the safest ever.

Grif­fith, ac­com­pa­nied by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, was on a walk­a­bout in down­town Port-of-Spain where hun­dreds of rev­ellers drenched in mud, paint, and oil gy­rat­ed along the streets to blast­ing so­ca mu­sic.

Grif­fith said his of­fi­cers had been work­ing long be­fore Car­ni­val Mon­day as, “for the past few weeks, the TTPS has kicked in­to op­er­a­tion mode at 217 Car­ni­val fetes so far.”

He said the pre-Car­ni­val events as hav­ing been vir­tu­al­ly in­ci­dent free.

Grif­fith said in com­par­i­son to past Car­ni­vals - they were aim­ing, “To en­sure this be­comes close, if not, the safest Car­ni­val ever.”

The Com­mis­sion­er re­in­forced the ben­e­fits be­ing de­rived from the in­clu­sion of tech­nol­o­gy to aid in crime-fight­ing ef­forts. This year, the TTPS has de­ployed sev­er­al un­manned drones to help mon­i­tor rev­ellers and will use a net­work of cam­eras to de­tect any no­tion of trou­ble.

Grif­fith al­so ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to as­sist the po­lice to help them.

“The TTPS is to be seen and not heard. The on­ly time we need to be heard is if things hap­pen out­side of what is re­quired. If all per­sons de­cide to ad­here to what is re­quired, we in­tend to be seen by en­sur­ing high vis­i­bil­i­ty to be a heavy de­ter­rent,” he said.

“I think the suc­cess is there, so far, not just in the low amount of crime for Car­ni­val we have seen so far, but the per­cep­tion and fear of crime has been great­ly re­duced by many cit­i­zens who have stat­ed this and we in­tend to con­tin­ue do­ing this. We are not go­ing to drop our guards.”

Grif­fith said of­fi­cers had been de­ployed to strate­gic ar­eas based on threat as­sess­ments con­duct­ed pri­or to Car­ni­val.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young com­mend­ed Grif­fith for the heavy po­lice pres­ence which he said had made 2019 the safest Car­ni­val yet.

Speak­ing to re­porters around 8 am at South Quay, Port-of-Spain fol­low­ing a walk-about in Wood­brook, Young said he had been re­as­sured as a cit­i­zen af­ter wit­ness­ing the lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket­ing the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

He said an un­prece­dent­ed amount of uni­formed and plain­clothes of­fi­cers had been as­signed to the des­ig­nat­ed routes which had en­sured the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of rev­ellers and spec­ta­tors par­tic­i­pat­ing in J’Ou­vert.

Young said the se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­gent had been sched­uled to wit­ness a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Fu­sion Cen­tre where they would see the se­cu­ri­ty drones in ac­tion.

He said there had been a se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus up­grade ahead of Car­ni­val which in­clud­ed the in­stal­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 new cam­eras in and around strate­gic places.

“Cer­tain­ly, we are see­ing the tech­nol­o­gy work­ing. It is still ear­ly yet as it is on­ly J’Ou­vert and we have a lit­tle stretch to go still but I feel very good see­ing the num­ber of men and women in the TTPS.”

“They seemed to have lis­tened to the Com­mis­sion­er’s call and are out in their num­bers to­day.”

Young said, “The pub­lic’s re­sponse has been very very pos­i­tive. All you hear is Gary, Gary, so it has been very good.”