An­na-Lisa Paul

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is ad­vis­ing that the pub­lic may soon face some lev­el of in­con­ve­nience when ac­cess­ing Port-of-Spain for work and leisure, as of­fi­cers re­new their ef­forts to curb a re­cent spike in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the cap­i­tal.

Speak­ing dur­ing the week­ly TTPS me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Snr Supt Rishi Singh said, “There has been the con­scious de­ci­sion that in the com­ing weeks, in or­der to get our de­tec­tions up, cit­i­zens are def­i­nite­ly go­ing to have to un­der­stand that there is the like­li­hood of some in­con­ve­nience that is go­ing to have be borne as we ramp up cer­tain op­er­a­tions, but we are con­fi­dent that this ramp­ing up is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to at­tend to the safe­ty in a way that we fre­quent­ly ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing mass events.”

Singh, who heads the PoS Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment and Crim­i­nal Records Of­fice (CID/CRO), ad­mit­ted, “With­in the re­cent weeks, we have seen some alarm­ing is­sues hap­pen­ing in the heart of our city.”

As­sur­ing the pub­lic that they are very much aware of what is hap­pen­ing, Singh added, “It is of se­ri­ous con­cern to us as the Po­lice Ser­vice, to the ex­tent that the Com­mis­sion­er has called to­geth­er all the var­i­ous in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers to ad­dress the ini­tia­tives, to ful­fil our man­date of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain.”

He said while this may sound like the rhetoric many are ac­cus­tomed to hear­ing, the TTPS does, in fact, take its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties very se­ri­ous­ly.

Point­ing out that Port-of-Spain is a cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict bor­dered by hous­ing schemes which have their own chal­lenges as de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties, Singh said, “What we are wit­ness­ing is that the per­sons that are in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ty have now felt the con­fi­dence to ac­cess per­sons who they nor­mal­ly will not, with­in the con­text of the streets of Port-of-Spain.”

While the TTPS has tried to min­imise the in­tru­sion on cit­i­zens cre­at­ed by crime-fight­ing strate­gies in the past, Singh said this will change in the com­ing weeks as of­fi­cers have been asked to ramp up ef­forts to re­turn safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty to the cap­i­tal’s streets.

On Ju­ly 30, Nathan Thomas, of St Paul Street, was gunned down around 4 am as he stood at the cor­ner of Hen­ry Street and In­de­pen­dence Square. This was fol­lowed by the killing of Shakiri Hen­ry at the cor­ner of George and Queen Streets on Ju­ly 29 around 3.45 pm. This sparked calls from Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez and Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud for more pa­trols and se­cu­ri­ty for the cap­i­tal.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns that gun-tot­ing ban­dits and killers al­so pos­sess more so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapons than po­lice, Singh said while it is in­tim­i­dat­ing, it is not enough to de­ter of­fi­cers from do­ing their job.

“Be­ing in­tim­i­dat­ed doesn’t mean that we will be pro­pelled in­to in­ac­tion,” he as­sured.

On the ex­tent of mi­grant in­fil­tra­tion and in­flu­ence on lo­cal gangs, Singh said, “Yes, there are is­sues, though mi­nor, at the mo­ment…where per­sons who are mi­grants have in­flu­ence on the crime land­scape of T&T.”

As Singh was up­dat­ing the me­dia, DO­MA pres­i­dent Aboud was meet­ing with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob two floors up on the is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty in the cap­i­tal.

Speak­ing in the lob­by fol­low­ing the hour-long meet­ing, Aboud said, “He is tak­ing an­oth­er look at the arrange­ments in down­town Port-of-Spain.”

He said DO­MA had of­fered up some ideas, as had Ja­cob.

“Our po­si­tion is that be­fore we can dis­cuss so­lu­tions, we need a very care­ful di­ag­no­sis of the prob­lem,” Aboud said, adding the TTPS and DO­MA were, “try­ing to col­lab­o­rate in a way that will bring some mean­ing­ful ben­e­fit to the city of PoS.”

“The work has to be done if we want to save our cap­i­tal city and if we want to guar­an­tee that the cur­rent de­cline is ar­rest­ed,” Aboud said.

“You can’t have moth­ers and their chil­dren com­ing to buy school­books and be­ing robbed, that is sim­ply to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able and will not, while we are still here, be tol­er­at­ed. We have to in­ter­dict against that on the ba­sis of shared de­cen­cy and hu­man rights and self-re­spect.”