Over 140 com­pa­nies have pledged their sup­port to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)’s I Sup­port Our Ser­vice (ISOS) cam­paign.

The ini­tia­tive, which is the brain­child of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s wife Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, was launched at the com­mis­sion­er’s res­i­dence at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my in St James yes­ter­day evening.

Speak­ing at the event, Dy­er-Grif­fith thanked those who sup­port­ed the pro­gramme as she gave ex­am­ples of how they agreed to give back to ded­i­cat­ed of­fi­cers.

“As an ex­am­ple, the ANSA McAL Group has pledged its group dis­count to po­lice of­fi­cers and Guardian Me­dia has pledged free space and time on their net­work to give ex­po­sure to this cam­paign,” she said.

Dy­er-Grif­fith sug­gest­ed that it would have a tan­gi­ble ef­fect on the morale of po­lice of­fi­cers, who are some­times un­der­ap­pre­ci­at­ed by mem­bers of the pub­lic.

“How do you think the mem­bers of the TTPS are like­ly to feel? How far do you think this ac­knowl­edge­ment and grat­i­tude will go with the mem­bers of the TTPS?” she asked.

In his ad­dress, CoP Grif­fith said the cam­paign was much more than just of­fer­ing po­lice of­fi­cers a dis­count.

“If cit­i­zens and the TTPS work hand in hand it is go­ing to play a big part to­wards what we all want, a bet­ter po­lice ser­vice. I am go­ing to make the most of the op­por­tu­ni­ty you have giv­en us here to­day and would not abuse it,” he said.

While he ad­mit­ted he still had work to do to im­prove the im­age of the TTPS, Grif­fith said some­times cit­i­zens were un­grate­ful to hard-work­ing of­fi­cers.

“Yes, we made mis­takes but we are hu­man. The TTPS comes from so­ci­ety and so­ci­ety is not per­fect, so we would nev­er be per­fect. We are ex­pect­ed to be held at a high­er stan­dard and that is what we would do,” he said.

In a brief ad­dress at the event, Ayesha Bou­caud-Clax­ton, se­nior man­ag­er of group cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Guardian Group, said her com­pa­ny jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty to part­ner with the TTPS as part of its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ac­tiv­i­ties.

“We owe all po­lice of­fi­cers a debt of grat­i­tude. These are brave men and women main­tain­ing law and or­der and de­fend­ing our com­mu­ni­ties. They risk their se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty, day in day out, to pro­tect us,” she said.

Al­so speak­ing at the event was Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent In­sp Michael Seales, who said they signed up for the project al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter it was sug­gest­ed by Dy­er-Grif­fith.