SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

As po­lice in­ten­si­fy their ef­forts to fight the ris­ing mur­der rate, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob has re­vealed they will soon be us­ing fa­cial recog­ni­tion soft­ware to de­tect and pre­vent crime.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob said the new tech­nol­o­gy should be in­tro­duced soon.

“Very soon, they’re sup­posed to be in­tro­duc­ing fa­cial recog­ni­tion, which can al­so help in some way or the oth­er, so we are hap­py, you know, that is the next step af­ter you do the grid with CCTV,” Ja­cob said.

The CCTV grid he was re­fer­ring to was an­nounced on Tues­day night by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who said the Gov­ern­ment was spend­ing $80 mil­lion to ac­quire and in­stall 2,500 CCTV cam­eras across the coun­try.

The Prime Min­is­ter was speak­ing dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas when he made the an­nounce­ment.

“And the in­ten­tion is to in­stall an­oth­er 2,500, that means there will be 5,000 pub­lic cam­eras in pub­lic spaces which are op­er­at­ed and owned by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley said.

Yes­ter­day, Ja­cob said the TTPS is ea­ger­ly await­ing this CCTV grid to as­sist them in their crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.

How­ev­er, he said he could not pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on how many of those cam­eras were al­ready in­stalled or were be­ing in­stalled.

“That is be­ing done by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty by a con­trac­tor and we are wait­ing with bat­ed breath for it to be hooked up for our op­er­a­tional cen­tres, which will be done in­cre­men­tal­ly, so it is not that the 2,500 have to be hooked, as they put it up in ar­eas, we will have ac­cess so we are look­ing for­ward for that to help us with the crime-fight­ing,” Ja­cob said.

He said with the open­ing of sev­er­al new Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tres across the coun­try, the TTPS al­ready has staff that can man these new CCTV grids.

Ja­cob said some of­fi­cers will have to be trained but he does not fore­see an is­sue with hav­ing ad­e­quate staff for the sys­tems.

He said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had been work­ing with po­lice since the be­gin­ning of 2022 to pro­vide ac­cess to their CCTV sys­tems, a part­ner­ship which has been work­ing well so far.

He al­so said an­oth­er Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty agency was cur­rent­ly test­ing the fa­cial recog­ni­tion soft­ware, which the TTPS will have ac­cess to “soon.”

Ja­cob said he could not give a time­line for the in­tro­duc­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy, as he said it was not be­ing done by the Po­lice Ser­vice.

“At some stage very soon, I be­lieve they will make the nec­es­sary an­nounce­ment. It is not be­ing done by the po­lice ser­vice, so it will not be right of me as the per­son to men­tion it and take the lead. But all I’m say­ing is that we are look­ing for­ward to, at some stage, when fa­cial recog­ni­tion is brought on board that will add to what we are deal­ing with,” he said.