JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Port-of-Spain will be safe lead­ing up to the busy Christ­mas sea­son, but that safe­ty may come with some in­con­ve­nience.

The as­sur­ance came as heads of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice toured the cap­i­tal city yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the end of the tour, ACP Garvin Hen­ry, who is in charge of Area West, which in­cludes the Port-of-Spain and West­ern Di­vi­sion polic­ing zones, said the po­lice pres­ence was just a show of re­as­sur­ance.

“We are con­fi­dent that this sea­son, which will con­tin­ue straight through to the car­ni­val, this in­ten­si­ty, this ag­gres­sive­ness, and an ag­gres­sive­ness I would speak to, not phys­i­cal ag­gres­sive­ness, but the vigour and the zeal with which the po­lice of­fi­cers in­tend to pur­sue this ef­fort. We ex­pect that the pub­lic may, from time to time, face a lit­tle in­con­ve­nience, but we want you to bear with us.”

He added that Port-of-Spain has been very suc­cess­ful in its ef­forts to deal with crime and crime pre­ven­tion; how­ev­er, he opt­ed not to di­vulge sta­tis­tics to sup­port his claim.

“Our plan is geared to not on­ly crime pre­ven­tion but build­ing trust and con­fi­dence and part­ner­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty. It is to have that sense of se­cu­ri­ty, build that sense of se­cu­ri­ty by mere pres­ence and in­creased pres­ence of the po­lice in Port-of-Spain to deal with the is­sues that af­fect both the shop­pers and busi­ness­men.”

Hen­ry met with the pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, Gre­go­ry Aboud, dur­ing his tour, who he said reaf­firmed the as­so­ci­a­tion’s com­mit­ment to work­ing with the po­lice for a safe city.

“All he want­ed to do was sen­si­tise us to cer­tain ar­eas that he thinks we should pay at­ten­tion to and give us the as­sur­ance that he will con­tin­ue the part­ner­ship and ex­press his grat­i­tude for what we are do­ing.”

Hen­ry said the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency has grant­ed the po­lice some as­sis­tance by al­low­ing them to in­crease and en­hance their au­thor­i­ty. He added that the pow­ers avail­able to the po­lice led to some sig­nif­i­cant seizures, pre­ven­tion, and re­duc­tion in the lev­els of crime in the coun­try.