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Monday, July 7, 2025

Calls for Eagle Eye Project to be implemented in Barataria

by

Shane Superville
9 days ago
20250627

Po­lice of­fi­cers and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials are lob­by­ing for the roll­out of the Ea­gle Eye Project in Barataria, say­ing the CCTV ini­tia­tive has al­ready proven ef­fec­tive in Tu­na­puna and could bol­ster ef­forts to stem crime in the area.

The project, dis­cussed at a Po­lice Town Hall meet­ing at the Barataria Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day, pro­vides re­al-time video feeds to po­lice com­mand cen­tres. Of­fi­cers cred­it­ed the sys­tem with im­prov­ing re­sponse times and help­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors by­pass hes­i­tant eye­wit­ness­es by giv­ing di­rect ac­cess to footage.

The pro­gramme is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firm Ul­ti­mate So­lu­tions. It was in­tro­duced in Tu­na­puna last year in re­sponse to a surge in vi­o­lent crime and ex­tor­tion.

Di­rec­tor of Ul­ti­mate So­lu­tions Adri­an Amin said footage from a re­cent house fire­bomb­ing in Arou­ca demon­strat­ed how quick­ly po­lice could iden­ti­fy ve­hi­cles and li­cence plates in­volved in se­ri­ous crimes.

He ac­knowl­edged con­cerns about pri­va­cy but said cam­eras aimed at per­son­al prop­er­ties could be blurred if res­i­dents re­quest­ed it.

“If we set up a cam­era that’s aimed down your street and it’s an­gled in front of your prop­er­ty and you don’t re­al­ly want po­lice see­ing that, then the footage can be blurred and the po­lice won’t have ac­cess to that,” he said. “But any­thing that is record­able will be record­ed clear.”

The project is com­mu­ni­ty-fund­ed, with sub­scrip­tion fees rang­ing from $99 to $199 per month. Cam­eras and alarms are in­stalled by Ul­ti­mate So­lu­tions, while po­lice op­er­ate the view­ing cen­tres at po­lice sta­tions.

One Barataria res­i­dent said:

“This is new to me but I think it’s strange that a pri­vate com­pa­ny can come in­to my neigh­bour­hood and pro­vide a ser­vice like this.

It’s al­most as if they are com­pet­ing with the gov­ern­ment be­cause I’m sure the gov­ern­ment has the same ser­vice they try to pro­vide.”

But Crime Stop­pers Trinidad and To­ba­go di­rec­tor Dar­rin Carmichael said the gov­ern­ment’s cam­eras, man­aged by the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, were most­ly on high­ways and main roads, while Ea­gle Eye was meant for res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial dis­tricts. He urged res­i­dents to con­sid­er the broad­er ben­e­fit of round-the-clock se­cu­ri­ty cov­er­age.

ASP Beepath, who was in­volved in the project’s launch in Tu­na­puna, al­so de­fend­ed the ini­tia­tive. He said it had al­ready helped solve crimes and be­lieved the cam­era pres­ence could act as a de­ter­rent.

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