Nek­isha Alexan­der-Cae­sar

nek­isha.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

“Women be­long in all places where de­ci­sions are be­ing made.”

~ Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg.

WPC Shawnee Thomp­son bold­ly took one step for­ward for women when she par­tic­i­pat­ed in a bomb tech­ni­cian train­ing course, mak­ing her the FIRST po­lice­woman to be in­ter­na­tion­al­ly qual­i­fied as a bomb tech­ni­cian with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Caribbean.

As a mem­ber of the Spe­cial Branch, Ex­plo­sives De­tec­tion and Dis­pos­al Unit of the TTPS, she not­ed it was not dif­fi­cult train­ing in a male dom­i­nat­ed field as she was al­ready priv­i­leged to be work­ing and train­ing in male dom­i­nant or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Her pas­sion to be­come a strong fe­male men­tor who could demon­strate to oth­ers how to be suc­cess­ful with­out hav­ing to just be one of the guys made her five-week train­ing un­com­pli­cat­ed.

She says “It has been im­por­tant to be strong and show how to make it okay to be a fe­male, even fem­i­nine in the ex­plo­sive in­dus­try and serve as a lead­ing ex­am­ple to oth­ers as the pro­fes­sion­al di­rec­tion women re­ceive from oth­er women is es­sen­tial to cham­pi­on their ideas, goals, and ca­reer path.”

PAS­SION TO SERVE

WPC Thomp­son al­ways had a pas­sion to serve, in her ear­ly years she en­joyed men­tor­ing young per­sons, help­ing oth­ers and be­ing a pa­tri­ot. How­ev­er, it was nev­er her dream to be a po­lice of­fi­cer. Her first ca­reer choice was to be­come a mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard, but, fol­low­ing four un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to be­come en­list­ed, she then re­alised that it was not her call­ing.

Her moth­er al­so played a piv­otal role in WPC Thomp­son be­com­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, as she con­tin­u­ous­ly en­cour­aged her to join, un­til fi­nal­ly she de­cid­ed to reg­is­ter with the Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice in 2012, dur­ing their re­cruit­ment at Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School, To­ba­go, and was lat­er suc­cess­ful in No­vem­ber 2016. In 2018, she then tran­si­tioned in­to the Reg­u­lar Po­lice Ser­vice.

The bomb tech ex­pert is ea­ger to con­tin­ue serv­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go with her new­ly ac­quired skills. She be­lieves this train­ing can make an im­pact lo­cal­ly by en­sur­ing an ef­fec­tive re­sponse to threats and de­tec­tion of ex­plo­sives. The TTPS will now be in a bet­ter place as it re­lates to threat as­sess­ments and pro­vid­ing train­ing and aware­ness to agen­cies on bomb threat man­age­ment.

I CAN DO ALL THINGS…

Every sit­u­a­tion has its chal­lenges but every ad­ver­si­ty con­tains the op­por­tu­ni­ty for growth and when WPC Thomp­son signed up for the train­ing, she was ready for the task. One of the biggest hur­dles she had to over­come was hav­ing to study a bit more than the oth­er par­tic­i­pants see­ing that they all had pri­or knowl­edge of most of the con­tent cov­ered.

The area of study was quite new to her and there­fore in or­der to be suc­cess­ful at this train­ing course she had to en­sure a lot of ex­tra work was done. On her chal­leng­ing days, WPC Thomp­son would re­mem­ber and re­cite a quote that she learnt at the Pen­te­costal Light and Life Foun­da­tion High School. “I can do all things through Christ who strength­ens me, I am con­fi­dent of this one thing, that he who has be­gun this good work in me is able to com­plete it, be­cause I am more than a con­queror through Je­sus Christ who loves me.” This was her dai­ly mantra ac­com­pa­nied by one of her favourite gospels “Trust in You” by An­tho­ny Brown.

GUTS AND GRIT

WPC Thomp­son is de­light­ed and tru­ly ho­n­oured to be the TTPS’ first in­ter­na­tion­al­ly qual­i­fied fe­male bomb tech­ni­cian. One im­por­tant les­son she learned dur­ing this train­ing was the im­por­tance of stay­ing up to date and cur­rent as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions con­stant­ly evolve their tech­niques, ex­plo­sive ma­te­ri­als and harm­ful agents.

WPC Thomp­son notes that the jour­ney took guts and grit and wants this mo­ment to be a win for all women and girls. “To all young women, nev­er doubt that you are valu­able, pow­er­ful and de­serv­ing of every chance and op­por­tu­ni­ty in the world to pur­sue and achieve your own dreams.” She be­lieves in blaz­ing her own trail when striv­ing for suc­cess. She urges young girls to find what dri­ves their pas­sion “set goals and mon­i­tor your progress, iden­ti­fy your strengths and weak­ness­es, re­main open mind­ed, nev­er lim­it your­self and be­lieve that all things are pos­si­ble through God.”