Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says he plans to con­tin­ue dress­ing in op­er­a­tional wear for field op­er­a­tions. He made the com­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a vis­it to Bon Air Gar­dens, Arou­ca, where of­fi­cers had hours ear­li­er con­duct­ed sev­er­al raids for sus­pects in­volved in a string of gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders.

“I dress like my troops. What I wear is mi­nor to how I per­form. I would not have my troops do what I would not do my­self, if my troops are in op­er­a­tion I would be with them,” Grif­fith told the me­dia at the end of the 24-hour po­lice ex­er­cise he named “Op­er­a­tion Strike Back”.

He said the op­er­a­tion be­came nec­es­sary as the com­mu­ni­ty was liv­ing un­der siege fol­low­ing six mur­ders 10 days in ad­di­tion to oth­er se­ri­ous crimes, but ad­mit­ted such ex­er­cis­es would not al­ways be pos­si­ble.

He said the of­fi­cers had tar­get­ed the com­mu­ni­ty af­ter gain­ing in­tel­li­gence. He said clin­i­cal polic­ing based on this in­tel­li­gence had as­sist­ed them in tar­get­ing cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als.

Not­ing that the 85-plus of­fi­cers in­volved in the ex­er­cise al­so had sup­port from the Air Di­vi­sion, he said, “We have been able to mo­bilise the as­set and utilise re­sources of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty so that the po­lice can per­form in an ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient man­ner. This is not a case of tax­pay­ers in­creas­ing their cost, what is in­creas­ing is pro­fes­sion­al polic­ing in in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions. So this is an op­er­a­tion that was well or­ches­trat­ed and we would have seen it by the 85-plus of­fi­cers on the ground with lo­gis­tic equip­ment.”

The ex­er­cise be­gan around 10 pm on Sat­ur­day and end­ed on Sun­day around 10 am.

Asked if he has any con­tin­gency plan in place for pos­si­ble ac­tion by the unions in re­sponse to the Petrotrin re­struc­tur­ing, he said this should be ad­dressed by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Supt Mc Don­ald Ja­cob, of North­ern Di­vi­sion, told T&T Guardian the op­er­a­tion re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of 24 peo­ple and the seizure of three firearms and 25 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion. Three of the ar­rest­ed sus­pects were held in con­nec­tion with the re­cent spate of mur­ders.

Mean­while, Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is link­ing the killings in the Bon Air dis­trict to the stalled con­struc­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in the area.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said af­ter get­ting in­for­ma­tion she con­tact­ed Grif­fith for as­sis­tance for the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I con­tact­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice re­quest­ing the in­ter­ven­tion of the po­lice in the Bon Air Gar­dens area, where there has been an up­surge in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty which seems to linked to the con­tact for the con­struc­tion in the area of a much-need­ed com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre,” she said.

The Bon Air South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre project which Robin­son-Reg­is is re­fer­ring to was pegged at $10.4 mil­lion and was ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed over by Au­gust 2018. How­ev­er, weeks be­fore the build­ing was com­plet­ed the main con­trac­tor walked off the project be­cause gangs in the area were de­mand­ing for pro­tec­tion mon­ey. A sub-con­trac­tor took over the project but was al­so forced to aban­don it af­ter he said a gun was point­ed at him on the site and pro­tec­tion mon­ey was al­so de­mand­ed.

Robin­son-Reg­is yes­ter­day con­firmed the job has still not yet been award­ed to a new con­trac­tor but that the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­Cott) was work­ing on se­lect­ing one.

With re­gards to the lock­down, Robin­son-Reg­is al­so thanked Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ja­cobs for his as­sis­tance.