Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Com­mu­ni­ty se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers are urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment tar­get­ed po­lice op­er­a­tions, while en­sur­ing safe­guards against abuse of pow­er, as part of their plan to in­tro­duce Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) in the fight against crime.

The Law Re­form Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures Act, 2026, was passed in the low­er house ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing with 27 in sup­port of the bill as op­posed to 11 against.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, re­tired se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent in charge of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Ken­ny McIn­tyre, said he was op­ti­mistic that the in­tro­duc­tion of spe­cif­ic ZOSO could yield long-term crime-fight­ing suc­cess­es.

He not­ed that the idea was not new, as it has been ex­plored in oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, but sug­gest­ed the au­thor­i­ties in­vest enough time and ef­fort in un­der­stand­ing the dif­fer­ent dy­nam­ics and unique chal­lenges af­fect­ing each com­mu­ni­ty un­der the strat­e­gy.

McIn­tyre, who re­tired in 2018 af­ter a 40-year-long law en­force­ment ca­reer, said a clear un­der­stand­ing of the pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers and their habits and rou­tines was nec­es­sary to make a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact in these com­mu­ni­ties.

He stressed that a clear, fo­cused ap­proach was need­ed for the po­lice to be suc­cess­ful, as he warned that there was no room for care­less­ness on the part of the au­thor­i­ties.

“They need to do their home­work, get oth­er agen­cies on board and do sur­gi­cal strikes so we can get the prop­er re­sults. Do the in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and brief­in­gs, get your teams to­geth­er and then take the ac­tion with fol­low-ups in the court.

“Get your ev­i­dence ... don’t do things by guess or hap­haz­ard­ly. Get your ev­i­dence so that when you go to the court you’ll be suc­cess­ful in get­ting things to rest for a while in these ar­eas.”

When asked if he felt that the mi­gra­tion of crim­i­nals from des­ig­nat­ed ZOSOs to oth­er com­mu­ni­ties could pose a chal­lenge to po­lice ef­forts and un­der­mine suc­cess, McIn­tyre said it was for this rea­son that ad­e­quate in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing is nec­es­sary.

He al­so said that gangs were con­duct­ing their own re­cruit­ment with­in com­mu­ni­ties and law en­force­ment should not be caught off-guard by any chang­ing crim­i­nal trends.

“They are re­cruit­ing and get­ting their or­gan­i­sa­tions larg­er and larg­er, and once you have a data­base to mon­i­tor the pro­gres­sion in terms of who is go­ing where, whether they are get­ting larg­er or small­er, where their soft base is and oth­er things along those lines, you keep the pres­sure up, then you’ll have a bet­ter chance of ap­proach­ing them.”

But while op­er­a­tional aware­ness is im­por­tant, com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Shi­han Mar­va John Lo­gan is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment not to over­look the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el col­lab­o­ra­tions with groups who have worked in dif­fer­ent at-risk neigh­bour­hoods.

Lo­gan, who has worked with the TTPS and the US Em­bassy in fos­ter­ing clos­er com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions and so­cial in­ter­ven­tion in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, said she ex­pect­ed greater con­sul­ta­tion with the Gov­ern­ment be­fore the in­tro­duc­tion of the ini­tia­tive, not­ing that stake­hold­ers like her­self had in­ti­mate un­der­stand­ing of the prob­lems fac­ing af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

“Come in the com­mu­ni­ties and work with us. Don’t just come to us when things are hot; come to us when things are cool, but through­out T&T there are peo­ple with a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence. Don’t leave us out, be­cause when you leave us out or stig­ma­tise us, be­cause when re­sources don’t come in­to these com­mu­ni­ties, every­thing else is short-lived.”

Lo­gan al­so ques­tioned what over­sight mech­a­nisms were in place to pre­vent mis­con­duct by po­lice and sol­diers op­er­at­ing in ZOSOs, as she re­ferred to com­plaints and al­le­ga­tions of as­sault which sur­faced dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency.

She warned that with­out trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty on the part of law en­force­ment, the trust of En­ter­prise res­i­dents could be lost.

“We, the cit­i­zens, have to re­spect the of­fi­cers and the law, and I’m mak­ing the plea: don’t re­tal­i­ate or an­tag­o­nise the of­fi­cers if you think they ap­proached you the wrong way. Right now, En­ter­prise is thriv­ing, and it isn’t by mag­ic but be­cause the res­i­dents came to­geth­er and worked with or­gan­i­sa­tions to make it a safer place.”

Dur­ing his ap­pear­ance on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so called for the cur­rent TTPS lead­er­ship to en­force manda­to­ry use of Body-Worn Cam­eras (BWCs) for of­fi­cers in the field, as he warned that such arrange­ments would strength­en sup­port and trans­paren­cy.

“For this ZOSOs to be ef­fec­tive, the coun­try must have the com­fort to know that the stan­dard op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dure that I es­tab­lished five years ago should be used, and any of­fi­cer who doesn’t have that body cam­era turned on should be dis­ci­plined.”

The bill is ex­pect­ed to be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate to­day.