RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says res­i­dents of Moru­ga are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from in­creased po­lice man­pow­er, ve­hi­cles and im­proved in­ves­tiga­tive ser­vices fol­low­ing the up­grade of the St Mary’s Po­lice Post to a full po­lice sta­tion.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the St Mary’s Po­lice Sta­tion on Wednes­day, Alexan­der said the change in sta­tus marks a ma­jor im­prove­ment in polic­ing for Moru­ga and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties, not­ing the up­grade comes af­ter per­sis­tent lob­by­ing and en­gage­ment at the high­est lev­els of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as well as by Moru­ga MP Michelle Ben­jamin.

He ex­plained that the new po­lice sta­tion will bring ex­pand­ed re­sources, in­clud­ing ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers and op­er­a­tional sup­port, al­low­ing res­i­dents to make of­fi­cial re­ports lo­cal­ly and have them ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

The min­is­ter not­ed that in the past, res­i­dents were of­ten forced to trav­el to oth­er sta­tions to pur­sue po­lice mat­ters, a sit­u­a­tion that caused frus­tra­tion with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about po­lice ve­hi­cles, Alexan­der said the up­grade would al­so mean bet­ter man­age­ment and avail­abil­i­ty of ve­hi­cles for pa­trols.

While he de­clined to spec­i­fy the ex­act num­ber of ve­hi­cles to be as­signed, he said re­sources would be pro­vid­ed and prop­er­ly main­tained.

Alexan­der stressed that the im­prove­ments are part of a broad­er ap­proach fo­cused on col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween res­i­dents, po­lice of­fi­cers and elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“It’s about talk­ing to your MPs in the area, talk­ing to your po­lice of­fi­cers. They don’t al­ways un­der­stand your needs and wants. To­geth­er, we are at our strongest point. There’s no weak link,” he said.

He added that the strength­en­ing of the St Mary’s Po­lice Sta­tion is aimed at im­prov­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery and pub­lic con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment in Moru­ga, en­sur­ing that of­fences com­mit­ted in the area are han­dled prompt­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

Mean­while, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the de­ci­sion to el­e­vate St Mary’s to a full po­lice sta­tion was al­so in­formed by Moru­ga’s ge­og­ra­phy and the need for smarter polic­ing at key ac­cess points.

“This is the gate­way to Moru­ga, and I ques­tioned the de­ci­sion that was there be­fore,” Gue­var­ro said, re­fer­ring to pre­vi­ous polic­ing arrange­ments.

“Cus­tomer ser­vice – polic­ing in T&T is a busi­ness. Cus­tomer ser­vice and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion are our busi­ness mod­el.”

Gue­var­ro said when the MP Michelle Ben­jamin raised con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly about polic­ing at the main gate­way to Moru­ga in St Mary’s, it was nec­es­sary for the po­lice lead­er­ship to lis­ten.

“If you block that gate­way at Poui Trace, where a very trag­ic in­ci­dent oc­curred in Au­gust last year, you ef­fec­tive­ly block off any en­trance or egress from Moru­ga ex­cept through Pinal–Rock­well. That lim­its move­ment and af­fects law-abid­ing cit­i­zens,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing of­fi­cers sta­tioned at St Mary’s, Gue­var­ro em­pha­sised that the fa­cil­i­ty is no longer a post but a ful­ly re­sourced po­lice sta­tion.

“You have been pro­vid­ed with ve­hi­cles and re­sourc­ing. Utilise it for the ser­vice of the peo­ple,” he said.

The com­mis­sion­er al­so un­der­scored the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ship, re­spect and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in polic­ing.

“We must lis­ten to our cus­tomers, just as any good busi­ness. When you in­ter­act with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, do so in a re­spect­ful and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner so that they will call you when some­thing hap­pens and give you the in­for­ma­tion you need to make a dif­fer­ence,” he said.

Gue­var­ro said of­fi­cers at St Mary’s must al­so work close­ly with neigh­bour­ing di­vi­sions, in­clud­ing Rio Claro, to en­sure seam­less polic­ing across bound­aries.