Shas­tri Boodan

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion says more mo­bile po­lice posts will great­ly as­sist in curb­ing crime.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Intab Ramjohn, who field­ed ques­tions from Freeport res­i­dents at a po­lice town meet­ing at the Three Roads Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Wednes­day, said the of­fi­cers man­ning mo­bile posts would be able to use da­ta to get crim­i­nals out of trou­bled ar­eas.

“I would like the ini­tia­tive of a mo­bile post so we can move around in the di­vi­sion be­cause we are not care­tak­ers of Freeport alone,” he said.

Not­ing that there had been a 22 per cent re­duc­tion in crime, but the tar­get is 23 per cent, Ramjohn said cen­tral Trinidad is ex­pand­ing but the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture at the ex­ist­ing po­lice sta­tions are lim­it­ed in serv­ing those rapid­ly ex­pand­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

He said: “We need to get rid of the crim­i­nals here, we need to close down the drug blocks, we need to get all the crim­i­nals out, we need to help the youths, we need to help the old so they can en­joy their rights, their lib­er­ty.”

Ramjohn ad­vised res­i­dents to ap­ply for firearms users’ li­cens­es and an­nounced plans for a jus­tice clin­ic to ad­vise them on the ex­tent to which they can go legal­ly when de­fend­ing their homes and prop­er­ties.

Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Arnold Ram said high­er vis­i­bil­i­ty of po­lice is need­ed. He al­so said he had been get­ting com­plaints from res­i­dents about their mis­trust of the po­lice.

“We have seen this week a po­lice of­fi­cer break­ing the lights (re­fer­ring to the traf­fic lights) to go and get gy­ros on the av­enue. We have al­so seen the is­sue of the Brent Thomas ab­duc­tion where po­lice of­fi­cers would have bro­ken all the rules to abduct a na­tion­al,” Ram said.

The Op­po­si­tion MP claimed that peo­ple are treat­ed like crim­i­nals at po­lice sta­tions.

“The po­lice ser­vice and the po­lice of­fi­cers are not wel­com­ing to the gen­er­al pub­lic. For us who are will­ing to share in­for­ma­tion and if we do not feel wel­comed, why would we vis­it the po­lice sta­tion to give any in­for­ma­tion we may have?” he asked.

Ram al­so ap­pealed to the po­lice to get se­ri­ous about deal­ing with noise pol­lu­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty.