The po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus says she is heart­ened that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and THA’s Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine have fi­nal­ly met on the is­sue of crime. But she stressed that po­lice of­fi­cers sent to To­ba­go from Trinidad must con­nect with the peo­ple if they are to help get a han­dle on the crime sit­u­a­tion.

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Tues­day, new an­ti-crime mea­sures for To­ba­go were an­nounced.

These in­clude an in­crease in CCTV cov­er­age on the is­land and the de­ploy­ment of more po­lice of­fi­cers from Trinidad to To­ba­go.

Tsoiafatt An­gus, who spoke dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, said those po­lice of­fi­cers will have a lot of com­mu­ni­ty work to do be­fore they can gain the trust of the peo­ple.

“These new po­lice­men have to be in­tro­duced to com­mu­ni­ties, they have to gain the trust so peo­ple can share, be­cause per­sons know what is go­ing on in To­ba­go, it’s just that they don’t feel com­fort­able or trust­ing to share. There­fore one of the first things is for them to con­nect through­out com­mu­ni­ties and give peo­ple the as­sur­ance, give peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty that they can trust them and get peo­ple to be­gin shar­ing the in­for­ma­tion that they may have,” she ex­plained.

The IDA po­lit­i­cal leader al­so said that the peo­ple of To­ba­go are al­ready bur­dened by the tough eco­nom­ic cli­mate, and added to that, she said they are feel­ing the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects of the ris­ing crime rate on the is­land.

“Peo­ple are quite re­signed, want­i­ng to throw their hands up in the air, feel­ing very hope­less with what has been hap­pen­ing with the state of the econ­o­my be­cause they are re­al­ly feel­ing the pain, more than just a pinch now they are feel­ing the pain. It has not re­al­ly helped with all these crimes we now have in our midst,” Tsoiafatt An­gus said.