JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the State of Emer­gency is not to be thanked for the re­duc­tion in crime in Port-of-Spain. Rather, he says the as­tute lead­er­ship of the po­lice of­fi­cers in the di­vi­sion have brought the re­sul­tant de­cline.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of a City Po­lice Post on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said last year at this time, there were 400 rob­beries in the cap­i­tal. This year, he said, the fig­ure stands at 258. He said the re­duc­tion was due to the lead­er­ship of ACP Garvin Hen­ry and Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom, who worked with the City Po­lice in ad­dress­ing crime.

“It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort that has kept crime down. And I know they would say, ‘Oh, we’re in a SoE.’ Any­body here feels that they’re in a SoE? The Gov­ern­ment could agree to hold ten SoEs from now till thy king­dom come, but if it is that the per­sons in uni­form around here, from the last joined re­cruit to the most se­nior, de­cide to sit in an of­fice and not do any­thing, you think crime would have been down? It’ll just be crime dur­ing an SoE. That would ben­e­fit no one,” he said.

The CoP added that last year, there were 91 homi­cides in Port-of-Spain, and for the same pe­ri­od this year, it stands at 31.

“From be­ing the most bloody city or bloody area or bloody di­vi­sion in the whole coun­try, lis­ten, Port-of-Spain safe! This re­minds me of the days when my moth­er used to take me up from Moru­ga at 4 o’clock in the morn­ing, sleep in your eyes, to come to Port-of-Spain to shop. I hope that this is an in­di­ca­tion where peo­ple can re­turn to the city and utilise this com­mer­cial cen­tre to bring that Yule­tide Christ­mas feel­ing to their fam­i­lies.”

Al­so speak­ing at the event was Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who called for po­lit­i­cal uni­ty to ad­dress crime.

“We have this prob­lem in T&T with the Ps: pol­i­tics, po­lice, the peo­ple, and pro­tec­tion. But when we’re deal­ing with the pro­tec­tion of our peo­ple, I want us to re­move the pol­i­tics. It must be re­moved in or­der to se­cure the safe­ty that we’re look­ing for, be­cause pol­i­tics must not come be­tween the safe­ty of cit­i­zens at any point,” the min­is­ter said.

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud of­fered to pay to con­struct an­oth­er post at the east­ern end of the prom­e­nade, which he said would be a fur­ther de­ter­rent to crime.

Mean­while, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne said the re-pur­posed taxi sta­tion was con­vert­ed us­ing staff from the City Cor­po­ra­tion to re­duce costs.

He added that the sub­sta­tion would al­so pro­vide a sense of safe­ty for tourists as they en­tered the city from the Port of Port-of-Spain.