Gail Alexan­der

Re­port those po­lice who don’t pro­duce ID!

That’s the ad­vice from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on op­tions avail­able to the pub­lic when po­lice of­fi­cers refuse to pro­duce iden­ti­fi­ca­tion dur­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

Young spoke about the sit­u­a­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries.

When mem­bers of the pub­lic deal with uni­formed po­lice in marked po­lice ve­hi­cles who refuse to pro­duce ID, Young said the per­son in ques­tion should note the date, time and place of the sit­u­a­tion as well as the num­ber of the ve­hi­cles and re­port it to the Po­lice Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau or Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty as soon as pos­si­ble.

If the of­fi­cer is not in po­lice uni­form and is us­ing an un­marked car, the per­son should re­port the mat­ter to the near­est po­lice sta­tions AS­AP and get a re­ceipt for their re­port.

Young said gold and sil­ver badges will soon be used by First and Sec­ond Di­vi­sion po­lice of­fi­cers re­spec­tive­ly to iden­ti­fy them­selves.

In Au­gust, the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion had pro­posed met­al badges to iden­ti­fy po­lice. The plan for badges was raised soon af­ter the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er as­sumed of­fice in Sep­tem­ber. Young took the is­sue a step fur­ther yes­ter­day de­tail­ing what badges which of­fi­cers will get.

“The badges will have of­fi­cers’ names and reg­i­men­tal num­bers and will be eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied by mem­bers of the pub­lic. They will be used as TTPS iden­ti­fi­ca­tion go­ing for­ward.”

He said the ten­der for sup­ply of badges was is­sued and replies were be­ing re­ceived. He as­sumed eval­u­a­tion would be next and then a con­tract will be award­ed.

He al­so re­vealed that 27.4 mil­lion has been stolen from cus­tomers in card “skim­ming” fraud in the last 22 months alone.

Young said po­lice had re­ceived a to­tal of 3,044 re­ports of card skim­ming over Jan­u­ary 1, 2017, to No­vem­ber 15, 2018, with a to­tal of $27.4 mil­lion be­ing skimmed il­le­gal­ly.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, al­so re­ply­ing on an­oth­er ques­tion, said no dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was ini­ti­at­ed against stu­dents who were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the Oc­to­ber protest at UWI.

He said in light of “cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the protest,” the po­lice’s “in­ter­ven­tion”, and le­gal process­es, the cam­pus de­cid­ed not to ap­ply any in­ter­nal dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures.