In an ef­fort to re­store pub­lic trust and en­hance safe­ty, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) has an­nounced that de­lib­er­ate joint op­er­a­tions will soon be un­der­way.

These op­er­a­tions, part of the re­cent­ly launched Joint Task Force One ini­tia­tive, aim to in­crease the pres­ence of law en­force­ment across sev­er­al polic­ing di­vi­sions.

Ma­jor Steve Ben­ny, who serves as Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer for the TTDF, em­pha­sised yes­ter­day that these ac­tions are in di­rect re­sponse to pub­lic con­cerns about the cur­rent state of crime.

“Since this launch, it’s been a lot of pro­gres­sion be­cause now we’re hav­ing a lot more pres­ence, a lot more vis­i­bil­i­ty,” Ma­jor Ben­ny ex­plained, not­ing that while the in­creased vis­i­bil­i­ty of po­lice and mil­i­tary per­son­nel has been ef­fec­tive, the pub­lic is ea­ger for more sub­stan­tial re­sults.

“In the back­ground of that, we al­so have de­lib­er­ate op­er­a­tions that are planned to hap­pen.”

Al­though he was un­able to pro­vide a spe­cif­ic time­line for these op­er­a­tions, Ma­jor Ben­ny re­as­sured cit­i­zens that they would take place soon.

“Yes, it will be hap­pen­ing in the very near fu­ture be­cause based on what we got from the pub­lic, vis­i­bil­i­ty is not the on­ly thing that they were con­cerned about. They’re ac­tu­al­ly con­cerned about get­ting down to the re­al im­pact of what we have planned.”

The Joint Task Force One ini­tia­tive was launched dur­ing a walk­a­bout in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day where high-rank­ing of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Ma­jor Ben­ny and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin, met with busi­ness own­ers and cit­i­zens.

The ini­tia­tive, which spans the Port-of-Spain, West­ern, East­ern, Cen­tral, and South­ern di­vi­sions, seeks to in­crease the vis­i­bil­i­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers and De­fence Force per­son­nel in an ef­fort to re­gain pub­lic con­fi­dence, and to re­duce the fear of crime through mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment with the pub­lic.

DCP Ben­jamin un­der­scored the im­por­tance of a phys­i­cal pres­ence in restor­ing trust, stat­ing, “This is a spe­cial op­er­a­tion where we are seek­ing to in­crease the pres­ence of both po­lice of­fi­cers and the De­fence Force so that per­sons can feel free, in not just the cap­i­tal, but in at least five di­vi­sions.”

Dur­ing the walk­a­bout, Ma­jor Ben­ny and DCP Ben­jamin vis­it­ed busi­ness­es along Fred­er­ick Street, where they lis­tened to con­cerns about lar­ce­ny and “snatch and grab” rob­beries. Their mes­sage was clear: “The cap­i­tal is safe. It will al­ways be safe. We are not go­ing to al­low any­one to run T&T.”

While there is no in­di­ca­tion of when these op­er­a­tions will be­gin, the TTDF and TTPS are work­ing close­ly to­geth­er, with Ma­jor Ben­ny con­firm­ing their col­lab­o­ra­tion has proven suc­cess­ful in the past.

“We have that sched­uled as well, which is to launch out to the re­main­ing po­lice di­vi­sions,” he stat­ed, though he did not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.