Yvonne Ba­boolal

Nine new po­lice sta­tions are com­ing, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day. He said so even as he crit­i­cised the Po­lice Ser­vice's 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive, which in­volves clos­ing sta­tions. He spoke to the me­dia at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, af­ter he met mem­bers of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) to dis­cuss plans to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty in the city. On the draw­ing board was a Gov­ern­ment plan to restart a project, ini­ti­at­ed dur­ing the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, to build 17 po­lice sta­tions, Warn­er added. He said the Gov­ern­ment would be­gin by build­ing nine. He did not say where they will be built. "I be­lieve I can in­flu­ence them to do it," he added. As to the cost, Warn­er said he did not know as yet.

Fur­ther, if Warn­er has his way, cit­i­zens will be get­ting "two for the price of one," with fire sta­tions next to the new po­lice sta­tions. Warn­er said that was the sug­ges­tion he made to Gov­ern­ment. "If you go Moru­ga, you will get a po­lice sta­tion and a fire sta­tion. If you go Ma­yaro, same thing," he said. Warn­er con­tin­ued to crit­i­cise the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive, which was in­tro­duced af­ter the ap­point­ments of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki, both Cana­di­ans. Warn­er met one-on-one with Gibbs af­ter last week's Cab­i­net meet­ing but de­tails of the meet­ing were not di­vulged. He read the ri­ot act to Gibbs and his of­fi­cers at the launch last Fri­day of the Po­lice Car­a­van on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, say­ing if crime was not re­duced he would be­come their en­e­my. Not­ing yes­ter­day there were good el­e­ments in any polic­ing ini­tia­tive, Warn­er said: "No­body can say it's bad to have more pa­trols." What he was against was the move to close down sta­tions. He said: "No­body can con­vince me that clos­ing a po­lice sta­tion will help put down crime. Here in T&T, we have a cul­ture where we rush to the po­lice sta­tion to com­plain and give re­ports."

Warn­er said he met mem­bers of the E-999 unit at 5 am yes­ter­day and they com­plained they re­ceived an av­er­age of 22,000 calls a year. He said 60 per cent of those were prank calls. "Last month, the calls in­creased. E-999 said peo­ple called when their hus­bands did not come home ear­ly, or when their neigh­bour was threat­en­ing them. They say they can't go to the po­lice sta­tion, so they are call­ing E-999." he said. Warn­er al­so plans to flood the streets with sol­diers, po­lice­men, es­tate con­sta­bles and mu­nic­i­pal po­lice­men. "High vis­i­bil­i­ty has been proven to be very ef­fec­tive," he added. He lament­ed that the Po­lice Ser­vice had 30 to 40 mo­tor­cy­cles which were not used.

He said: "The irony is that in Ch­agua­nas there are five mo­tor­cy­cles and one po­lice­man to ride them. Some­thing has to be wrong." Warn­er said "some group of per­sons" must be held re­spon­si­ble for the fact that se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras in­stalled by the Gov­ern­ment along the high­way and the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and on pub­lic build­ings in Port-of-Spain have not been work­ing for more than a year. He added: "Peo­ple must be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions and in­ac­tion. "How could you fight crime with­out cam­eras? They are say­ing the cam­eras were shot at by ban­dits. "You have cam­eras which are bul­let-proof. You need a con­trol room from where you can mon­i­tor the cam­eras. There is too much in­ac­tion."