Sascha Wil­son

Ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties on roads with­in the Princes Town dis­trict is ex­pect­ed to be dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced with the es­tab­lish­ment of the Princes Town Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Traf­fic Unit.

The launch of the unit took place on Mon­day at the Tri­an­gle in Princes Town and would see of­fi­cers us­ing a new tick­et­ing de­vice.

Co­or­di­nat­ed by ASP Wen­dell Guz­man, the unit con­sists of a sergeant, a cor­po­ral and three con­sta­bles.

In a brief ad­dress, Guz­man not­ed, “The main ob­jec­tive of this Unit is to de­ny the crim­i­nals from us­ing the roads to per­form any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties by show­ing a po­lice pres­ence and en­forc­ing the law. A marked po­lice ve­hi­cle is as­signed to this unit so they can achieve their ob­jec­tives.”

Dis­clos­ing their sta­tis­tics for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to date, he said a to­tal of 28 road traf­fic ex­er­cis­es were con­duct­ed with­in the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty. Fifty four fixed penal­ty no­tices were is­sued, 339 field in­ter­view forms com­plet­ed and three ar­rest were made.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said, a to­tal of 151 fixed penal­ty no­tices were is­sued and four ar­rests were made for the of­fence of ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment.

He said, “Due to the high sta­tis­tics of traf­fic of­fences be­ing com­mit­ted with­in this mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, this unit will be a great as­set to the Princes Town Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion and by ex­ten­sion the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice. We will con­tin­ue to work hard in en­sur­ing a safe and crime free coun­try. “

Coun­cil­lor Deryck Mathu­ra, chair­man of the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee, said the new unit will add val­ue to the cor­po­ra­tion.

Prais­ing the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice for their hard work, he added, “We have now seen where they have moved in a di­rec­tion of polic­ing the re­gion rather than that stig­ma of be­ing mar­ket po­lice.” The wire­less tick­et­ing de­vice forms part of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port

U-Turn Sys­tem that was launched ear­li­er this year. This Sys­tem sup­ports the De­mer­it Point, Traf­fic Tick­et­ing (Fixed Penal­ty) No­tices and Red Light En­force­ment sys­tems.