RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s Car­ni­val de­but was a suc­cess­ful one, as she proud­ly an­nounced yes­ter­day that there were no ma­jor in­ci­dents of crime for dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so dis­pelled ru­mours of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by her of­fi­cers, say­ing they turned out in their num­bers to pick up du­ties over the Car­ni­val week­end up to yes­ter­day.

“Po­lice of­fi­cers are out in their num­bers. All ar­eas are cov­ered. We have no prob­lems with at­ten­dance,” Hare­wood-Christo­pher said dur­ing her first Car­ni­val walk­a­bout to take in the Car­ni­val rev­el­ry in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“I would like to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank all my of­fi­cers for their out­stand­ing ef­forts. Of­fi­cers who were on va­ca­tion were re­quired to come in and they did,” she added.

Just last week, po­lice of­fi­cers al­so signed off on the four per cent wage in­crease of­fered by CPO Daryl Din­di­al.

Asked if there were any in­creased re­quests for Firearm Users Li­cense (FUL) for the Car­ni­val sea­son, Hare­wood-Christo­pher said yes.

“There will al­ways be re­quests for FULs, that is be­cause we have a na­tion of per­sons who be­lieve that a firearm can pro­tect them, so, yes, but the is­suance of FULs, there’s a strin­gent in­ves­tiga­tive process, so, even if a re­quest is made it would not have been processed.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who ac­com­pa­nied the po­lice brass on the walk­a­bout, al­so said he was pleased with the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket pro­vid­ed for the sea­son by law en­force­ment agen­cies who walked in tan­dem for the pe­ri­od.

“I had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see even this morn­ing’s re­port and it’s re­flect­ing just as the Com­mis­sion­er, the Vice Chief of De­fence Staff, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, and the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer have re­port­ed, that in terms of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty so far, it ap­pears as though the sys­tems that are in place, whether aer­i­al, whether on the sea and cer­tain­ly on land in­to this fes­tiv­i­ties, it seems it has been work­ing.”

Asked if there were any is­sues or con­cerns from any of the law en­force­ment agen­cies, Hinds replied: “I in­ter­pret your ques­tion as one of hard­core mat­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and you would ex­pect that these were not mat­ters to be dis­cussed but you would have heard there has been no is­sue or com­plaints from those re­spon­si­ble for ex­e­cut­ing the law en­force­ment, the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty plat­form, they have no com­plaints.”

He added: “Hav­ing been briefed and hav­ing briefed the Cab­i­net and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on the op­er­a­tional plat­form that the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and the oth­er heads of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have put in place, thus far, on be­half of all us, I can say I am quite san­guine, quite hap­py.”

Chief of De­fence Staff, Colonel Dex­ter Fran­cis, said the T&T De­fence Force was out in full num­bers and sup­port­ing each di­vi­sion through­out T&T.

“No in­ci­dents have been re­port­ed. Sol­diers re­spond to calls for as­sis­tance by mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice. In that re­gard, any au­thor­i­ty sol­diers car­ry out, they car­ry out at the be­hest of the mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice. The sol­diers will al­low the po­lice to do their jobs and will pro­vide a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment to do so,” Fran­cis said.

Last week, it was an­nounced that 300 sol­diers would be de­ployed to sup­port the TTPS dur­ing the sea­son.

Fran­cis al­so dis­closed that there were in­creased joint po­lice and army pa­trols through­out the coun­try, in­clud­ing To­ba­go.

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar said his of­fi­cers were al­so in full at­ten­dance over the week­end.

“I have to com­mend my of­fi­cers. The pris­on­ers are quite calm and all is in or­der. We are quite safe,” Ra­moutar said.