Vice pres­i­dent of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion In­sp Roger Alexan­der is ad­vo­cat­ing that the new Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ma­jor Ed­mund Dil­lon con­firm act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams as CoP.

Williams has been act­ing in his po­si­tion since Au­gust 7, 2012, when he suc­ceed­ed then Cana­di­an com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs.

"It is im­por­tant to con­firm Mr Williams' ap­point­ment as com­mis­sion­er be­cause you elim­i­nate the thought of peo­ple say­ing that the po­lice is po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned. We want to keep po­lice in­de­pen­dent at all times," Alexan­der said.

He al­so called on Dil­lon to pro­vide Williams with the nec­es­sary tools to ad­e­quate­ly fight crime and al­low him to man­age the re­sources.

Pledg­ing to as­sist the new Gov­ern­ment in the crime fight, Alexan­der al­so called for a com­mit­ment from Dil­lon to en­sure that the new Gov­ern­ment did not pres­sure the po­lice or try to in­flu­ence their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

"Do not get in­volved and put un­nec­es­sary pres­sure on the po­lice while they con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­cause when you do that, it seem you are in­ter­fer­ing," Alexan­der said in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Wednes­day.

He said the fight against crime was not a lost cause and al­so urged bet­ter pa­trols along T&T's porous mar­itime bor­ders.

The prop­er mon­i­tor­ing of im­mi­grants, the es­tab­lish­ment of a DNA data­base, as well as leg­is­la­tion to ex­tract sam­ples from peo­ple en­ter­ing and ex­it­ing the coun­try, he said, would al­so as­sist in the fight against crime.

"We need to have a prop­er data­base with im­mi­grants be­cause right now we have no in­for­ma­tion on these for­eign­ers. We need to pass laws so that we can ex­tract DNA from every cit­i­zen and from every per­son en­ter­ing and ex­it­ing T&T. This will as­sist us in fight­ing crime," Alexan­der said.

He added that all cit­i­zens must be able to pro­vide iden­ti­fi­ca­tion if they were out­side their homes.

Alexan­der said prop­er dis­ci­pline must be in­stilled in stu­dents be­tween the ages of 14 and 19.

"We can use in­sti­tu­tions like the Girl Guides, the Scouts and the Red Cross to in­still these val­ues," Alexan­der said. (RS)