An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cials of the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil have ap­pealed to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to re­think a de­ci­sion to trans­fer Snr Supt Richard Smith from the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

At a me­dia brief­ing on Sat­ur­day, coun­cil pres­i­dent Oral Sook­nanan said the move could re­verse progress made dur­ing Smith’s tenure to re­duce crime across the di­vi­sion.

Smith is due to take up a new post­ing in the North­ern Di­vi­sion from to­mor­row.

Sook­nanan said Smith, who lives in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, was fa­mil­iar with the dis­trict’s op­er­a­tions and had built suc­cess­ful part­ner­ships with res­i­dents, who had grown con­fi­dent enough to share in­for­ma­tion via his open door pol­i­cy.

“Every time we have some­thing that works and is start­ing to work, some­how, to me, they dis­man­tle it and they move him from one dis­trict to a next,” he com­plained.

“If we do not have con­sis­ten­cy in this dis­trict or any oth­er dis­trict, how could we fight crime?”

Mem­bers of the coun­cil said in each dis­trict in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, Smith had re-es­tab­lished sta­tion coun­cils where res­i­dents and po­lice of­fi­cers got to­geth­er to dis­cuss is­sues af­fect­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

“Right now it is work­ing and like him, they all have open door poli­cies,” Sook­nanan said.

His views were echoed by Ty­rone Nanan, the busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil, who said, “The busi­ness peo­ple are not hap­py be­cause af­ter one year of work­ing with him, we are very con­fi­dent in him be­cause we have seen the lev­el of crime de­crease in the south­ern area. To lose some­one like that is go­ing to be a very tough thing.”

Nanan said with the Christ­mas sea­son ap­proach­ing, “crime is every­body’s busi­ness”. He said Smith’s trans­fer “could cause chaos for the busi­ness peo­ple”, as many of them had ap­plied for firearm users’ li­cences (FULs) and had been turned down.

In re­sponse to calls for him to re­main in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, Smith ex­plained the ra­tio­nale be­hind the CoP’s de­ci­sion. He said Hare­wood-Christo­pher was “strate­gi­cal­ly set­ting her field now so per­sons will have to move to ac­com­mo­date what she in­tends to achieve”.

He added, “I am one of the per­sons she has iden­ti­fied to move around to achieve cer­tain things in the area. They want to buffer ar­eas with high crime rates so we can get those ar­eas to ac­cept­able lev­els at least.”

Smith said in an at­tempt to curb mur­ders and se­ri­ous crimes, the CoP “is pump­ing more re­sources and as well as chang­ing around some of the First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers”.

Com­ment­ing on the ap­peals from Sook­nanan and the coun­cil for him to re­main in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, he said: “I am touched they would go that dis­tance to keep me here but I had a con­ver­sa­tion with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and I un­der­stand her strate­gies and I ac­cept my move.”

He as­sured that he will con­tin­ue col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tives as part of his com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try. Smith will be re­placed by Snr Supt Bri­an Ram­phall of the North­ern Di­vi­sion.