An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Re­tired se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent John­ny Abra­ham has been named as head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) and Field Of­fice.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der con­firmed the con­tract ap­point­ment yes­ter­day as he emerged from a tour of the E999 Com­mand Cen­tre at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James, say­ing Abra­ham was ex­pect­ed to be­gin work soon.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Alexan­der said Abra­ham will be re­spon­si­ble for the over­all op­er­a­tions of the NOC, which in­cludes the E999 Com­mand Cen­tre, which com­pris­es civil­ians and law en­force­ment agents.

Abra­ham will be in charge of the civil­ian sec­tion of the E999 Com­mand Cen­tre, while a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer will con­tin­ue to is­sue in­struc­tions to of­fi­cers.

Civil­ian em­ploy­ees are usu­al­ly the first point of con­tact with the pub­lic in the NOC, as they are the ones who an­swer dis­tress calls and redi­rect the in­for­ma­tion to the near­est po­lice sta­tion and/or po­lice pa­trol.

Ea­ger to get back in­to the field, Abra­ham, 68, said, “I am go­ing to be co­or­di­nat­ing from the Com­mand Cen­tre. From li­ais­ing with of­fi­cers on mo­bile pa­trol to en­sur­ing calls for help are an­swered by rapid re­sponse pa­trols in a time­ly man­ner.

“I will be on the ground mak­ing sure no one can say the po­lice did not re­spond, or there was no ve­hi­cle avail­able. No­body will be al­lowed to lie down and say it have no pa­trol.”

Re­veal­ing he had re­ceived count­less en­cour­ag­ing calls and pos­i­tive mes­sages from po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic re­gard­ing his ap­point­ment, Abra­ham said, “It is some­thing I am ac­cus­tomed do­ing and I am look­ing for­ward to it.”

Re­fer­ring to the iron will and dras­tic mea­sures he em­ployed to keep crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty down when he was in charge of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Abra­ham added, “The over­whelm­ing sup­port I have re­ceived from of­fi­cers call­ing me, is that they want me to come back hard on the road, and I won’t let them down. I will be giv­ing a hun­dred per cent on a dai­ly ba­sis to make sure that peo­ple feel a lit­tle safer in the coun­try.”

Alexan­der said yes­ter­day’s vis­it to the Com­mand Cen­tre was for Abra­ham to get ac­quaint­ed with the unit and the per­son­nel.

Alexan­der said the au­thor­i­ties were lucky to have “a law­man of his cal­i­bre once again head­ing a strate­gic arm of law en­force­ment and I know he is hap­py to be part of the sys­tem to re­duce crime.”

Both Alexan­der and Abra­ham shied away from re­veal­ing just how this lat­est part­ner­ship had come about.

PNM: He begged for a job

Ad­dress­ing the lat­est ap­point­ment yes­ter­day, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day claimed Abra­ham had been around the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress since 2015, “beg­ging for a job.” He sar­cas­ti­cal­ly ques­tioned whether the ap­point­ment was “made in the na­tion­al in­ter­est or to suit one’s po­lit­i­cal agen­da.”

He chal­lenged the Cab­i­net to say if and when the post was cre­at­ed and ap­proved; the pro­fes­sion­al and aca­d­e­m­ic cri­te­ria re­quired; the as­so­ci­at­ed salary; the eval­u­a­tion process used to se­lect Abra­ham; and when the post was ad­ver­tised.

He said, “If those ques­tions can­not be an­swered, then it leaves one with the on­ly con­clu­sion that Mr Abra­ham was ap­point­ed sole­ly be­cause of his as­so­ci­a­tion with the UNC, and I don’t know if that is go­ing to ben­e­fit the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and by ex­ten­sion, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Com­ment­ing on Abra­ham’s se­lec­tion, for­mer NOC di­rec­tor Dr Garvin Heer­ah said the for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer’s “pres­ence brings a sense of op­er­a­tional tough­ness and de­ci­sive­ness that will res­onate across the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work.”

Heer­ah ac­knowl­edged Abra­ham was wide­ly recog­nised for his hunter in­stinct, ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach, and proven track record in crime fight­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing his tenure in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

Hav­ing sat in that post be­fore, he said, “The head of the NOC oc­cu­pies a po­si­tion akin to a head of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty co­or­di­na­tion, with re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that ex­tend in­to shap­ing strate­gic se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy and re­spons­es at the na­tion­al, re­gion­al, and glob­al lev­el. To meet this chal­lenge, Mr Abra­ham must bal­ance his well-es­tab­lished strengths in op­er­a­tional polic­ing with the broad­er re­quire­ments of in­ter-agency lead­er­ship, diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment, and long-term strate­gic plan­ning.”

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said such ap­point­ments were en­tire­ly up to the Gov­ern­ment.

He stressed the NOC was not strict­ly for law en­force­ment but a com­pre­hen­sive and ex­pan­sive unit used for col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­or­di­na­tion among var­i­ous arms of the state, in­clud­ing nat­ur­al and man­made dis­as­ters, sport­ing and en­ter­tain­ment events, and traf­fic pile­ups and dis­rup­tions.

“The per­sons who run the NOC must un­der­stand this is not just a sys­tem with 999 calls and you are re­spond­ing, that is a very small part and that is why it cost US $80 mil­lion.”

He said the hard­ware in­clud­ed tech­ni­cal equip­ment and oth­er items that can trans­form all as­pects of op­er­a­tions that re­quire the State’s sup­port.