RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

A Case Man­age­ment Unit has been es­tab­lished with­in the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) to pre­vent cas­es from be­ing dis­missed in the courts.

The IATF is known for pa­trolling hot spots through­out the coun­try, in­clud­ing East Port-of-Spain, Laven­tille, Sea Lots and Beetham.

Dur­ing these pa­trols, there are many stops and search­es where ar­rests are made for var­i­ous of­fences, in­clud­ing firearm and am­mu­ni­tion and drug pos­ses­sion.

Most of these ar­rests lead to peo­ple fac­ing crim­i­nal charges. How­ev­er, in the past when there was no case man­age­ment unit in the IATF, many of these mat­ters were dis­missed be­fore the courts.

How­ev­er, with the unit now ex­ist­ing, this may be a thing of the past.

Since its es­tab­lish­ment, over 1,300 case files have been sub­mit­ted to var­i­ous courts through­out Trinidad, in­clud­ing over 130 firearm files, IATF Snr Supt Os­wain Subero said dur­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day.

“At the IATF, we have the Case Man­age­ment Unit where the of­fi­cers are tak­en from the ini­tial stage of in­ves­ti­ga­tions, where the ar­rests are made, where the files are com­plet­ed and pre­sent­ed be­fore the court, where the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of our cit­i­zens are looked af­ter so that their mat­ters will be heard in the short­est pe­ri­od of time,” Subero said.

“This came about be­cause of the amount of mat­ters that were be­ing dis­missed be­fore the courts in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have recog­nised that since its im­ple­men­ta­tion there has been a dras­tic de­crease in these dis­missal of mat­ters,” he added.

Subero al­so as­sured that train­ing for of­fi­cers con­tin­ues, adding that for the past eight years, IATF of­fi­cers have been un­der­go­ing train­ing.

“Now at the IATF, for the past eight years we have a train­ing de­part­ment which con­ducts train­ing for our of­fi­cers in the use of force pol­i­cy in the TTPS, cus­tomer ser­vice and ethics, crime scene preser­va­tion, crime pre­ven­tion meth­ods and con­duct­ing ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient road­blocks.”

Subero said with all the train­ing of­fered to of­fi­cers in var­i­ous as­pects, he be­lieves it has re­sult­ed in a de­cline in vi­o­lent crimes and se­ri­ous of­fences.

“In 2005 we had 176 mur­ders tak­ing place in our area of op­er­a­tions.

“We have seen a con­tin­ued de­cline in vi­o­lent crimes and se­ri­ous of­fences so through this method we have been able to move that mur­der fig­ure from 176 to 36 mur­ders.”

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