Derek Achong

Hor­rif­ic, hor­ren­dous and in­tol­er­a­ble were the words used by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day to de­scribe the 19 mur­ders for the year.She said so while speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the launch of the Po­lice Ser­vice's Rapid Re­sponse Unit at the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

In her ad­dress, her first since re­turn­ing from New York af­ter vis­it­ing her ail­ing sis­ter, Sal­ly Ahamad, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said:"For those fam­i­lies who are in the midst of tragedy and loss, I want to say our thoughts, our prayers and in­deed my heart is with all of you."She said the new ini­tia­tive, which ini­tial­ly is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in on­ly three polic­ing di­vi­sions, was part of her gov­ern­ment's plan to strength­en the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and re­duce crime.

"I know that this is no com­fort to fam­i­lies whose loved ones are gone but I think we need to re­it­er­ate that we must in­ten­si­fy the war on crime and on crim­i­nals," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.She said the unit would as­sist in quick­en­ing the po­lice re­sponse to re­ports of crime and raise pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ser­vice.She added: "The launch of this unit rep­re­sents an es­ca­la­tion on our war on crime and will be an im­por­tant strat­e­gy, not on­ly in help­ing to win that war but al­so to help make our cit­i­zens feel safe again.

"The unit will op­er­ate by ev­i­dence-based and in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven process­es which all fo­cus on quick­er and more ef­fec­tive re­spons­es to calls for help from cit­i­zens."Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called on cit­i­zens to as­sist the Gov­ern­ment in the an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives, es­pe­cial­ly through par­tic­i­pat­ing in up­com­ing na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions sched­uled to be launched lat­er this month.She al­so en­cour­aged peo­ple to re­port crimes and sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty us­ing the 999 and 911 emer­gency hot­lines.

"If we each do our part as gov­ern­ment and as re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens, we can to­geth­er make our coun­try safe again," she added.Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams again called on cit­i­zens to work with the po­lice in the fight against crime.The unit com­pris­es a lit­tle over 80 of­fi­cers and in its first phase will use al­most two dozen spe­cial­ly-mod­i­fied and paint­ed ve­hi­cles.

Williams said its pi­lot project was in­tro­duced in the West­ern, North­ern and North East­ern Di­vi­sions be­cause sta­tis­tics showed a large num­ber of the vi­o­lent crimes oc­curred along the East West Cor­ri­dor.