Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Se­nior Re­porter

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@cnc3.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish 30 po­lice posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go is be­ing wel­comed by se­cu­ri­ty and busi­ness stake­hold­ers, but a crim­i­nol­o­gist is warn­ing that the ini­tia­tive could face its biggest test when the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ends.

Dr Randy Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day said the SoE has been as­so­ci­at­ed with a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly gang-re­lat­ed homi­cides, but warned that the re­duc­tion may not con­tin­ue once emer­gency mea­sures are lift­ed.

He re­ferred to re­cent po­lice sta­tis­tics that showed gang-re­lat­ed killings have ac­count­ed for about 40 per cent of homi­cides, and that the de­cline be­ing seen now is pri­mar­i­ly linked to a re­duc­tion in that cat­e­go­ry.

“What is hap­pen­ing now, giv­en that the State of Emer­gency is de­signed to tack­le the gang-re­lat­ed el­e­ment of homi­cides, you find that that has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” Seep­er­sad said.

But he cau­tioned that oth­er forms of homi­cide, in­clud­ing those linked to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and al­ter­ca­tions, re­main a sig­nif­i­cant part of the coun­try’s over­all homi­cide prob­lem.

And with the SoE sched­uled to end in mid-Sep­tem­ber, Seep­er­sad said there is a “very re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty” gang-re­lat­ed homi­cides could rise again.

He be­lieves the new po­lice posts could help pre­vent that re­bound by main­tain­ing a po­lice pres­ence in com­mu­ni­ties where gang ac­tiv­i­ty is con­cen­trat­ed.

“Giv­en, how­ev­er, that the mo­bile po­lice posts have been set up, that will be a strat­e­gy that could ac­tu­al­ly en­sure that you con­tin­ue to sat­u­rate those high crime ar­eas, es­pe­cial­ly the gang com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Seep­er­sad fur­ther con­tend­ed that the posts should not nec­es­sar­i­ly be viewed as per­ma­nent fix­tures. Crime pat­terns change ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, he ex­plained, and the abil­i­ty to repo­si­tion the posts could al­low po­lice to re­spond to those changes.

Last week, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed that the units will be de­ployed based on T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) da­ta and crime trends.

Ac­cord­ing to Seep­er­sad, the lo­ca­tions ap­pear to cor­re­late gen­er­al­ly with crime da­ta, while the strat­e­gy al­lows po­lice to widen their ge­o­graph­ic reach be­yond the coun­try’s most no­to­ri­ous high-crime com­mu­ni­ties.

But he stressed that po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty alone can­not solve the crime prob­lem.

Ac­cord­ing to him, “polic­ing isn’t ac­tu­al­ly de­signed to get at the root caus­es of the crime prob­lem.”

“Polic­ing is some­thing by its very na­ture, it’s re­ac­tive.”

He ex­plained that those root caus­es in­clude fac­tors such as ad­verse child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences, fam­i­ly crim­i­nal­i­ty, abuse, ne­glect, low ed­u­ca­tion­al achieve­ment and school dropout.

Ad­dress­ing those is­sues, he be­lieves, re­quires in­ter­ven­tions in­volv­ing fam­i­lies, schools, com­mu­ni­ties, so­cial ser­vices and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, and those in­ter­ven­tions could take years to pro­duce mea­sur­able re­sults.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad mean­while sup­port­ed the ini­tia­tive and the de­ci­sion to have the mil­i­tary work along­side po­lice.

She de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as a wel­come move and said po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty can im­prove cit­i­zens’ sense of se­cu­ri­ty while act­ing as a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nals.

“I will wel­come a po­lice car in front of my house any day,” Ram­per­sad said.

“The pres­ence of the po­lice, the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the po­lice is very, very im­por­tant.”

She point­ed to Ja­maica and Pana­ma as ex­am­ples where vis­i­ble polic­ing has played a role in im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty.

But Ram­per­sad al­so ar­gued that the crime re­sponse should not be­come a po­lit­i­cal con­test. She wants the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to meet and broad­en the na­tion­al plan for ad­dress­ing crime.

“I would love to host a fo­rum in which I can bring all of them to­geth­er. We need that col­lab­o­ra­tion. This is in the in­ter­est of the cit­i­zens,” she said.

How­ev­er, Ram­per­sad ac­knowl­edges that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s West­min­ster-style sys­tem and ad­ver­sar­i­al pol­i­tics make that dif­fi­cult.

Mean­while, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers pres­i­dent Vivek Char­ran said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is gen­er­al­ly favourable to­ward the new po­lice posts. He said greater po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty can help de­ter op­por­tunis­tic crimes such as chain and hand­bag snatch­ing and ve­hi­cle break-ins.

Char­ran al­so sup­ports the po­lice post at the Ed­die Hart Recre­ation­al Ground in Tacarigua, where large num­bers of peo­ple gath­er and where a food mar­ket gen­er­ates com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.

He said the lo­ca­tion is strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned be­tween the Tu­na­puna, Arou­ca and Ari­ma po­lice sta­tions and could im­prove po­lice re­sponse times.

But Char­ran said the suc­cess of the ini­tia­tive will ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on the of­fi­cers man­ning those posts and how they in­ter­act with the pub­lic.