As vi­o­lent crime con­tin­ues in Trinidad and To­ba­go, a law en­force­ment train­er is sug­gest­ing more aware­ness about the use of force tac­tics for of­fi­cers and more train­ing from lo­cal in­struc­tors.

Oluye­mi Mashama, bet­ter known as Pro­fes­sor O, has em­barked on a 15-year jour­ney in tac­ti­cal readi­ness, law en­force­ment, and in­struc­tor de­vel­op­ment, which has now cul­mi­nat­ed in a re­gion­al first.

In May, he be­came the on­ly per­son from the Caribbean to earn the cov­et­ed ti­tle of In­struc­tor Train­er Ad­vanced from De­fence Tech­nol­o­gy, for­mer­ly Sa­fari Land Train­ing Group—a pres­ti­gious US-based in­sti­tu­tion with over a cen­tu­ry of ex­pe­ri­ence in po­lice and mil­i­tary in­struc­tion.

“This train­ing didn’t just hap­pen this year,” Mashama ex­plained. “That jour­ney ac­tu­al­ly start­ed 15 years ago. It’s an in­vi­ta­tion-on­ly pro­gramme, and over the years, they’ve been watch­ing—track­ing your per­for­mance, your growth, your con­tri­bu­tion.”

The train­ing group, which fo­cus­es on tac­ti­cal law en­force­ment readi­ness, in­vit­ed on­ly ten in­di­vid­u­als world­wide to this year’s high­ly se­lec­tive pro­gramme. Mashama was the lone Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tive, stand­ing along­side elite can­di­dates from Switzer­land, France, the Unit­ed States, and the Unit­ed King­dom.

“See­ing the list and re­al­is­ing I was the on­ly one from the Caribbean—that said some­thing about where we are, but more im­por­tant­ly, where we could be,” he not­ed.

Out of the ten par­tic­i­pants, on­ly five—in­clud­ing Mashama—ad­vanced to the pro­gramme’s fi­nal stage in 2026. “By the first day we were ten,” he re­called. “By Mon­day evening, it was nine. And by the end, on­ly five of us made it to the next stage. That tells you the lev­el of in­ten­si­ty and what’s ex­pect­ed at this lev­el.”

Mashama’s ca­reer spans over 22 years in law en­force­ment and even longer as a mar­tial artist and self-de­fence in­struc­tor. But he cred­its his suc­cess not on­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence but to cul­tur­al rel­e­vance. “I bring first-world un­der­stand­ing in­to our lo­cal cul­ture and tai­lor it to fit,” he said. “Many times, for­eign train­ers are brought in, but they don’t un­der­stand our peo­ple. I’ve lived here, worked here. I un­der­stand how our cit­i­zens think, how our crim­i­nals op­er­ate, and how our of­fi­cers en­gage.”

That in­sight proved crit­i­cal dur­ing his most re­cent de­ploy­ment in Guyana, where he led the coun­try’s first na­tion­al non-lethal train­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme. In just a few weeks, he over­saw the train­ing of more than 305 of­fi­cers from the Guyana Po­lice Force, De­fence Force, Coast Guard, Prison Ser­vice, and oth­er na­tion­al units.

“In Guyana, we made his­to­ry,” Mashama stat­ed. “It was the first time less-lethal force was ad­dressed at this lev­el, with prop­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. But it’s not just about the tools—it’s about the phi­los­o­phy. Of­fi­cers need to un­der­stand the en­tire use-of-force con­tin­u­um: when to talk, when to act, and when to de-es­ca­late.”

Mashama be­lieves one of the most over­looked el­e­ments of law en­force­ment re­form in the Caribbean—es­pe­cial­ly in T&T—is the lack of con­ti­nu­ity in train­ing.

To ad­dress that gap, he’s build­ing a self-sus­tain­ing re­gion­al train­ing mod­el, one that cer­ti­fies lo­cal train­ers and en­sures year­ly re­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. “Just yes­ter­day, I re­ceived an­oth­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” he shared. “I’m now a Mas­ter In­struc­tor in Con­duct­ed En­er­gy Weapons (CEWs), such as tasers, through HUSHA Train­ing Acad­e­my. This al­lows me to train and cer­ti­fy CEW in­struc­tors un­der the HUSHA pro­gramme across the re­gion.”

De­spite this in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and grow­ing re­gion­al de­mand, Mashama lament­ed that T&T has been slow to en­gage, not just him, but lo­cal law en­force­ment of­fi­cials who have tak­en the time and re­sources to fur­ther their train­ing and can im­part their knowl­edge on­to for­mer col­leagues.

“I teach out­side. I get called to Guyana, Suri­name, oth­er parts of the Caribbean. But here? I’m of­ten over­looked,” he said. “We have the peo­ple here. We have the knowl­edge. We just don’t use it.

“When some­thing goes wrong in the field, we’re quick to blame the of­fi­cer. But the re­al ques­tion is: what train­ing did they re­ceive? What tools were they giv­en? Be­cause if your on­ly tool is a ham­mer, then every­thing starts to look like a nail.”

Mashama de­signs his train­ing to sim­u­late re­al-world pres­sure. “We put of­fi­cers in high-stress sce­nar­ios so they learn to make split-sec­ond de­ci­sions un­der pres­sure. Be­cause in re­al life, that’s all the time you get. Mean­while, the pub­lic, the me­dia, and the courts will have weeks—or years to scru­ti­nise that one sec­ond.”

As he pre­pares for the fi­nal stage of his jour­ney to­ward be­com­ing a Mas­ter Train­er, Pro­fes­sor O al­so hopes to in­spire law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to pur­sue train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties not just for their pro­fes­sion­al ad­vance­ment but for their ac­com­plish­ments.