An­na-Lisa Paul, Ralph Ban­warie, Sascha Wil­son

The safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions put in place for the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals have been suc­cess­ful in pre­serv­ing law and or­der dur­ing yes­ter­day’s J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions which marked the of­fi­cial start of the Car­ni­val 2023 street pa­rade.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher stat­ed in a re­lease yes­ter­day that J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions across all ten polic­ing di­vi­sions had been “safe and se­cure.”

Of­fi­cials re­port­ed that the CoP was ex­treme­ly pleased with the com­bined ef­forts of all di­vi­sions in en­sur­ing that there were no ma­jor in­ci­dents or se­ri­ous crimes re­port­ed and that rev­ellers and spec­ta­tors were kept safe dur­ing the morn­ing’s ac­tiv­i­ties.

She said, “Metic­u­lous plan­ning and prepa­ra­tions, train­ing and ramped up an­ti-crime and road traf­fic ex­er­cis­es such as Op­er­a­tion Grand Slam and SO­CA, in the lead up to Car­ni­val 2023, have de­liv­ered ex­pect­ed re­sults.”

Buoyed by ze­ro re­port­ed in­ci­dents across the di­vi­sions, Hare­wood-Christo­pher as­sured of­fi­cers would con­tin­ue their height­ened pres­ence and an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions across the T&T over the next two days to en­sure the en­tire Car­ni­val pe­ri­od re­mains safe.

A masquerader dances around a police officer on Ariapita Avenue on Carnival Monday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

While Hare­wood-Christo­pher did not con­duct the tra­di­tion­al walk­a­bout and brief­ing with re­porters in Port-of-Spain as done by pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers, she did join of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain and North­ern Di­vi­sions dur­ing the J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions in the field.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) last Thurs­day an­nounced that 800-plus of­fi­cers in­clud­ing 300 sol­diers would be de­ployed dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

Mean­while, re­ports out of the East­ern Di­vi­sion al­so in­di­cat­ed the cel­e­bra­tions were “qui­et”.

As part of the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments for the two days, stop-and-search ex­er­cis­es were car­ried out at East­ern Main Road, San­gre Grande in the vicin­i­ty of Roy­al Cas­tle; Fos­ter Road, Ojoe Road and East­ern Main Road in the vicin­i­ty of Re­pub­lic Bank.

While noth­ing il­le­gal was found, of­fi­cers seized glass bot­tles from rev­ellers, while glass mugs were found in some ve­hi­cles.

It was a sim­i­lar scene along Broad­way in Port-of-Spain where of­fi­cers con­duct­ed road­blocks and ve­hic­u­lar search­es which led to beer bot­tles be­ing seized from some peo­ple.

Com­man­der of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Se­nior Supt Khan praised his of­fi­cers for the ini­tia­tive as he be­lieved it had, “Ac­count­ed for an in­ci­dent-free Car­ni­val not on­ly in San­gre Grande but the en­tire East­ern Di­vi­sion.”

He com­mend­ed Supt Doo­d­hai; Asp Fitz­worm; In­sps Ram­lakhan, Ramkaran, Ramkissoon, Harp­er; and Sgts Leon, De la Rosa, Nar­ine and Hazel who manned the var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions in the East­ern Di­vi­sion for their ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty and en­sur­ing J’Ou­vert was 2023 in­ci­dent free.

There were in­ci­dent-free J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions in San Fer­nan­do, Bar­rack­pore, Princes Town and Moru­ga. Snr Supt Richard Smith com­mend­ed rev­ellers and spec­ta­tors alike for obey­ing the law.

He at­trib­uted the suc­cess to the mea­sures they had put in place.

Smith re­vealed that they had met with all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing DJs and had re­quest­ed them to en­cour­age and urge rev­ellers to be­have them­selves.