Op­po­si­tion Leader and Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was the guest of ho­n­our of the Lauder­hill Po­lice De­part­ment to see first-hand the tech­niques, equip­ment and train­ing used for fight­ing crime. Crime, she said in a news re­lease, con­tin­ued to be one of the ma­jor is­sues af­fect­ing cit­i­zens in the coun­try. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in Flori­da on of­fi­cial busi­ness over the East­er week­end. Her vis­it in­clud­ed a fund-rais­er in her ho­n­our at which she was the fea­tured speak­er. Flori­da's SWAT team leader, Sgt San­ti­a­go, wel­comed her to their head­quar­ters and gave her a tour of the fa­cil­i­ties. Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was quot­ed in the re­lease as say­ing: "I am quite im­pressed with the crime-fight­ing tech­niques em­ployed by your di­vi­sion and when we form the next Gov­ern­ment, I hope to work with you to learn more on how we can im­ple­ment some of your struc­tures to help re­duce the high crime rate in Trinidad and To­ba­go." The Op­po­si­tion Leader was privy to some of the dai­ly train­ing the po­lice un­der­go, such as demon­strat­ing to her how SWAT worked to help find and lo­cate kid­nap vic­tims. The train­ing of the po­lice dogs was an­oth­er ex­er­cise which the po­lit­i­cal leader wit­nessed. She was im­pressed with the ar­tillery used by the po­lice in their fight against crime and those in­clud­ed grenade-launch­ers and oth­er weapon­ry.