Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go po­lice have is­sued a strong warn­ing that the is­land will not be­come a refuge for crim­i­nals seek­ing to es­cape in­ten­si­fied law en­force­ment ef­forts in Trinidad dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The state­ment came from Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Earl Elie fol­low­ing a To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing yes­ter­day. The meet­ing, chaired by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, brought to­geth­er se­nior of­fi­cials from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the busi­ness and tourism sec­tors.

Elie was re­spond­ing to con­cerns raised by Cur­tis Williams, Chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, who ex­pressed fears that crim­i­nals might flee to To­ba­go as pres­sure mounts in Trinidad.

“To­ba­go might be a safe haven for these el­e­ments that may be run­ning from Trinidad, be­cause Trinidad is hot right now,” Williams told Guardian Me­dia in a phone in­ter­view last Fri­day. He urged po­lice to stay vig­i­lant, act de­ci­sive­ly, and called on res­i­dents to re­main calm and co­op­er­a­tive.

In re­sponse, Elie as­sured the pub­lic that the po­lice are al­ready tak­ing proac­tive steps to pre­vent any such crim­i­nal mi­gra­tion to the is­land. He al­so wel­comed the in­tro­duc­tion of new tools to sup­port law en­force­ment, in­clud­ing a To­ba­go-spe­cif­ic crime-re­port­ing hot­line and the up­com­ing launch of the “Safe To­ba­go” mo­bile app by the THA.

“Let me start by say­ing that we wel­come the ad­di­tion­al tool pro­vid­ed to us by the State of Emer­gency,” Elie said. “You will see an in­crease in po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty and more joint op­er­a­tions in­volv­ing the TTPS and the De­fence Force.”

He stressed that To­ba­go will not be al­lowed to be­come a sanc­tu­ary for crim­i­nal el­e­ments from the main­land.

“Let me al­so give the pop­u­la­tion the as­sur­ance that To­ba­go will re­main a safe place. It will not be a haven for crim­i­nals—or so-called crim­i­nals—from Trinidad,” he said. “So those of y’all con­sid­er­ing com­ing to To­ba­go as an es­cape for your crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties—we in­tend to treat with the sit­u­a­tion hands-on.”

Elie added that the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive of the se­cu­ri­ty forces is to pro­tect both res­i­dents and vis­i­tors.

“There will be a height­ened pres­ence and in­creased se­cu­ri­ty ac­tiv­i­ty in To­ba­go to en­sure law-abid­ing cit­i­zens re­main safe,” he said.

The SoE was im­ple­ment­ed last week fol­low­ing what au­thor­i­ties de­scribed as a se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty threat iden­ti­fied by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.