Less than three months af­ter its com­mis­sion­ing in Tu­na­puna, the Ea­gle Eye Project is set to be ex­pand­ed across Trinidad.

The project, which was ini­tial­ly launched by the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil with a net­work of just over 100 cam­eras at a cost of $400,000, has since ex­pand­ed to en­com­pass 200 cam­eras with­in the busi­ness dis­trict. More im­por­tant­ly, it has helped see a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in in­ci­dents of crime.

With the pos­i­tive re­sponse gar­nered, the project is now be­ing ex­tend­ed to res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties and has al­ready been rolled out in neigh­bour­hoods span­ning East, West, and Cen­tral Trinidad.

Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil pres­i­dent Neil Boodoos­ingh said the project had es­tab­lished a grid in Tu­na­puna and as­sist­ed in solv­ing many crimes.

“We are look­ing at more lar­ce­ny of ve­hi­cles, small rob­beries, but what I would say is that the cam­era sys­tem is as­sist­ing in help­ing solve these crimes. They can now fol­low per­pe­tra­tors along the East­ern Main Road, in­to our back streets, and maybe on­to the high­way, even to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, and it has been work­ing to solve crime,” Boodoos­ingh said.

He added, “Peo­ple are lin­ing up by the door, want­i­ng this sys­tem in all busi­ness ar­eas at first. And now, be­cause of tech­nol­o­gy and be­cause of the open­ing that we got through Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, we are now en­ter­ing neigh­bour­hoods. So it start­ed in Tu­na­puna, and we have a num­ber of neigh­bour­hoods that are on board with our cam­era sys­tem.”

The cam­eras are be­ing in­stalled by a com­pa­ny called Cit­i­zen Sur­veil­lance Net­work.

With more re­ports of home in­va­sions, Boodoos­ingh said this was the rea­son they had been meet­ing with many com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad.

“We are now see­ing more home in­va­sions, so peo­ple want a lit­tle more con­nec­tiv­i­ty. They want a lit­tle more at­ten­tion in the res­i­dences or the neigh­bour­hood watch ar­eas. So we have de­vised, and we sat down with our sup­pli­er, which is Cit­i­zen Sur­veil­lance Net­work, and we came up with some­thing called a su­per siren that is de­signed to work in neigh­bour­hoods, where­by all cam­eras that are in­stalled will ac­com­pa­ny a su­per siren that each res­i­dent that par­tic­i­pates in this pro­gramme will have ac­cess to,” he said.

Boodoos­ingh not­ed that they were now set­ting up sta­tion coun­cils in oth­er ar­eas, and it would be the largest col­lab­o­ra­tive project, with video screens in each sta­tion.

He said, “At the mo­ment, our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, when I last spoke with you, was around 140. We are close to 200 in our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty but when you con­sid­er our res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty or the neigh­bour­hood watch­es, we have crossed and sur­passed 300 be­cause of the num­ber of meet­ings that we are do­ing on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

The res­i­den­tial project costs $2.20 per day per cam­era.

Tu­na­puna res­i­dent, Pas­tor Bridge­lal Seenath, who has sup­port­ed the ini­tia­tive on his street in Tu­na­puna, said, “These pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures are very pru­dent, and it will help keep us in rel­a­tive safe­ty. Not on­ly that, it kind of brings the com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er with one pur­pose, and we can have greater ca­ma­raderie that each is look­ing out for the oth­er.”

He added, “We find that this ini­tia­tive us­ing the cam­eras, es­pe­cial­ly as they are linked to the po­lice, is of great ben­e­fit and is a def­i­nite de­ter­rent to would-be crim­i­nals.”

The cam­eras are cur­rent­ly mon­i­tored 24 hours a day by of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.