Geisha Kow­lessar

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert is as­sur­ing that po­lice of­fi­cers will not cy­cle in­to crime "hot spots." Speak­ing at a hasti­ly-called press brief­ing at Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Philbert sought to clear the air on con­cerns raised by some po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Sin­gling out the crime-rid­den com­mu­ni­ty of Laven­tille as an ex­am­ple, Philbert said: "Laven­tille has its spe­cif­ic chal­lenges, and I do not see that a bi­cy­cle go­ing through Laven­tille would serve a pur­pose." Philbert said based on in­tel­li­gence and the analy­sis of crime, there was an in­di­ca­tion that the use of bi­cy­cles would be ef­fec­tive in reach­ing spe­cif­ic ar­eas and cit­i­zens. The bi­cy­cle of­fi­cers, Philbert said, would be out­fit­ted with bul­let­proof vests, head gear and would be armed. "We are con­cerned with the wel­fare of the of­fi­cers in a very strong way, and mea­sures will be put in place.

"We are not pun­ish­ing of­fi­cers by giv­ing them a bi­cy­cle to ride," Philbert said. He said the bi­cy­cles were al­ready in the coun­try. Asked about a cost, Philbert could not pro­vide a fig­ure, say­ing on­ly that the cost was "rea­son­able." Ac­cord­ing to the top cop, there was no "Bi­cy­cle Pa­trol Unit" in the Po­lice Ser­vice. He ex­plained that the bi­cy­cle cops were part of a "spe­cial ini­tia­tive" to sup­ple­ment foot and mo­bile pa­trols. "This is not some­thing new. It is not a bi­cy­cle unit or a bi­cy­cle squad. "In the old days, there were bi­cy­cles which were used in a very strong way," Philbert said.

He said the need to im­ple­ment this "spe­cial ini­tia­tive" was due part­ly to an in­crease in rob­beries and house­break­ing and lar­ce­ny re­ports. "Rob­beries on the street and idle peo­ple... Those are some of the things we want to tar­get, and the bi­cy­cles will help us do that," Philbert said. Dis­clos­ing that there al­ready ex­ist­ed bi­cy­cle cops in To­ba­go for sev­er­al years, Philbert said of­fi­cers in Trinidad would cy­cle in­to res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial ar­eas and shop­ping dis­tricts with­in three weeks. Some of the ar­eas iden­ti­fied by Philbert in­clud­ed Ch­agua­nas, Wood­brook and Bon Air in Arou­ca. "The use of the bi­cy­cles would be for spe­cif­ic tar­get­ing for short pe­ri­ods.

"It would al­so be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for of­fi­cers to in­ter­act with res­i­dents and to vis­it schools," Philbert said. He iden­ti­fied some 50 of­fi­cers cho­sen from dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the Po­lice Ser­vice who have been in train­ing for the past two weeks. Talks were al­so held with mem­bers of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss fur­ther con­cerns. Dis­pelling claims that of­fi­cers were re­luc­tant to use bi­cy­cles as part of their crime-fight­ing tools, Philbert de­scribed his charges as "en­thu­si­as­tic." "It is not a one-off pa­trol; It is part of a com­po­nent. We have found there is a ne­ces­si­ty to reach our cit­i­zens in var­i­ous ways," Philbert said.