Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob is urg­ing as many po­lice of­fi­cers as pos­si­ble to get vac­ci­nat­ed and says the Po­lice Ser­vice will use the Po­lice Hos­pi­tal, lo­cat­ed at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my in St James, in the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve.

He was speak­ing at the Po­lice Christ­mas Awards at the In­ter-Agency Task Force build­ing in Aranguez yes­ter­day.

He al­so called on the of­fi­cers to do more to as­sist the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion in solv­ing mur­ders.

Ja­cob said that since the pan­dem­ic be­gan most of the po­lice of­fi­cers who have died were not vac­ci­nat­ed.

“Twen­ty-four per­son­nel from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice have died from COVID-19. Out of that one of­fi­cer was ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, the oth­er two were par­tial­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and the oth­ers were not vac­ci­nat­ed. There­fore I call on po­lice of­fi­cers to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“At present, we have 180 per­son­nel in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice who are pos­i­tive and we have about 760 per­sons who are on quar­an­tine. So we are rein­tro­duc­ing the util­i­sa­tion of the Po­lice Hos­pi­tal in an ef­fort to pro­pel the vac­ci­na­tion process. Even though there are vac­ci­na­tion cen­tres, you find that of­fi­cers would ask for time.”

He added that since the Prime Min­is­ter made his an­nounce­ment two weeks ago, there has been an “uptick” in the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

“Some of them are even ask­ing for time off to get vac­ci­nat­ed and that is the rea­son that we are us­ing the Po­lice Hos­pi­tal as ar­eas of vac­ci­nat­ing of­fi­cers.”

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has said he was “em­bar­rassed” two weeks ago when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley gave the sta­tis­tics which showed the low vac­ci­na­tion lev­els among the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

De­spite the re­luc­tance of many to be vac­ci­nat­ed, Hinds said he re­mains op­ti­mistic that more peo­ple will be vac­ci­nat­ed and he al­so re­peat­ed the con­se­quences for those pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees who are not vac­ci­nat­ed.

“If one does not ad­here to that safe zone pol­i­cy in pub­lic spaces, the Gov­ern­ment of­fices, then one runs the risk of los­ing mon­ey be­cause you would be fur­loughed and of course, every­one has their fi­nan­cial arrange­ments and it’s all very per­son­al. I hope that peo­ple would rise above the things that stop them now. We recog­nise that peo­ple have thoughts and they have dif­fer­ent rea­sons for tak­ing their po­si­tions. It’s our prayer that they will rise above those and pro­tect them­selves,” he said.

Hinds spoke yes­ter­day at a Christ­mas Day prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the head­quar­ters of the In­ter-Agency Task Force, Aranguez, San Juan.

He al­so said that he would con­sid­er any mea­sures that would en­cour­age mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and the pub­lic to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“We are al­ways opened to ideas. As a mat­ter of fact, I re­call the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al say­ing any ideas you have, whether it is mu­sic, give in­cen­tives, we are very opened to all ideas. Once it comes we are pre­pared to con­sid­er all things in or­der to en­cour­age peo­ple to take the vac­cine.”

Brigadier Gen­er­al Dex­ter Fran­cis who is Vice Chief of the De­fense Staff who al­so spoke ad­vised mem­bers of the De­fence Force to dis­re­gard “mis­in­for­ma­tion” on so­cial me­dia and urged them to get vac­ci­nat­ed as the coun­try is be­ing “rav­aged” by the dead­ly virus.

“The De­fence Force has suf­fered loss­es. We have been los­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed mem­bers. We have be­gun to roll out a pro­gramme of aware­ness to con­vince those mem­bers who are yet to give con­sid­er­a­tion to tak­ing the vac­ci­na­tion in the hope that we would be able to have num­bers in­creased be­tween now  and the time that the Prime Min­is­ter has set the dead­line.”

Ag CoP Ja­cob al­so spoke on crime-solv­ing telling the of­fi­cers to be more proac­tive in se­cur­ing mur­der scenes and al­so in help­ing to take in­for­ma­tion be­fore Homi­cide of­fi­cers ar­rive.

“Even though your main func­tion is crime pre­ven­tion, there is the oth­er side...the de­tec­tion of the crime and bring­ing per­sons be­fore the court,” Ja­cob said.

He said they could do so by be­ing ob­ser­vant when they ar­rive at the scenes, tak­ing notes, se­cur­ing and pro­tect­ing the crime scene, lis­ten­ing to what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion was giv­en, and check­ing on who was present.

“I want you to sup­port the Homi­cide of­fi­cers and some­times you are un­aware of ba­sic pieces of in­for­ma­tion that could be help­ful,” he said.

He said they should not dis­count the im­por­tance of tak­ing ‘con­tem­po­rary notes of what you saw’.