RHON­DOR DOWLAT

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son claims the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is 1,400 short of its de­sired com­ple­ment of of­fi­cers.

Dick­son made the com­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to ques­tions on some of the ma­jor chal­lenges cur­rent­ly af­fect­ing the TTPS, that may pre­vent Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher from achiev­ing her man­date of re­duced crime by June month-end.

“We have over 1,400 of­fi­cers short...we are grap­pling with that,” Dick­son said.

He said there are cur­rent­ly at­tempts to do re­cruit­ing but an­tic­i­pat­ed that this will be able to do lit­tle to re­solve the is­sue.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the TTPS cur­rent­ly has 6,491 of­fi­cers. How­ev­er, the de­sired num­ber is 7,884. Some 330 of­fi­cers are cur­rent­ly on sus­pen­sion.

Dick­son said in two weeks he is sup­posed to meet with Hare­wood-Christo­pher to dis­cuss re­cruit­ment, train­ing for of­fi­cers in weapon­ry use and oth­er is­sues.

“We have weapons that could be able to com­pete against what the crim­i­nal el­e­ments have, but what we do need is train­ing not up­dat­ed weapons. But I would sug­gest that of­fi­cers are trained by Guard and Emer­gency Branch of­fi­cers and is­sued cer­tifi­cates which will al­so give fur­ther dates for re­train­ing and so on. This would ease the po­lice train­ing acad­e­my as well,” Dick­son said.

“We al­so need our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to play a greater crit­i­cal role in terms of how we treat with the crim­i­nals that are brought to jus­tice and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem isn’t just the court but it al­so speaks to our pris­ons and all the oth­er ap­pa­ra­tus­es to be func­tion­al be­cause the State has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, like­wise the com­mu­ni­ty has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, like­wise the cor­po­rate cit­i­zens have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, so we need all these stake­hold­ers to be on the same page rather than we op­er­at­ing in si­los and pass­ing the blame,” he added.

Mean­while, dur­ing a walk­a­bout at Pin­to Road, Ari­ma, yes­ter­day morn­ing, ACP Wayne Mys­tar al­so said there were many chal­lenges for the TTPS but said he strong­ly be­lieves the ex­ist­ing of­fi­cers are ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted to achiev­ing the Com­mis­sion­er’s man­date.

“Things are work­ing well with the of­fi­cers. We are mo­ti­vat­ed... We are ready to work to get in­to the com­mu­ni­ty and get our hands dirty, so to speak, so that we can take back the whole as­pect of crime in those com­mu­ni­ties and re­store con­fi­dence with­in the TTPS and re­store con­fi­dence in the mem­bers of the pub­lic,” Mys­tar said.

Sergeant Naitram, who heads the Pin­to Road Po­lice Post, said they are faced with man­pow­er is­sues.

“There’s al­ways the chal­lenge of man­pow­er. How­ev­er, quite re­cent­ly, un­der the new lead­er­ship of the Com­mis­sion­er, we have seen an in­crease in the num­ber of of­fi­cers post­ed, we have got­ten new­er ve­hi­cles, more ve­hi­cles, and with the ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er, we are bet­ter able to pa­trol the dis­trict ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.”

Asked about re­cent spike in home in­va­sions, Sgt Naitram ad­mit­tred they were on the rise in the dis­trict, but said they were in con­stant con­tact with peo­ple who con­tact of­fi­cers on their per­son­al cell­phones to re­lay nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion for them to act on. He said there are con­stant foot and mo­bile pa­trols through­out the dis­trict.

Mys­tar added: “There are some chal­lenges, but we are man­ag­ing quite well from the point of view of the as­pect of en­sur­ing that the nec­es­sary area sta­tion dis­tricts have the nec­es­sary man­pow­er.

“We are will­ing, and we would be work­ing with you the mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty to bring that sense of se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty and we can’t do this on our own, we need the as­sis­tance of mem­bers of the pub­lic to part­ner with us in the fight against crime.”

Yes­ter­day was Mys­tar’s sec­ond com­mu­ni­ty walk­a­bout. The first was held in Five Rivers, Arou­ca, sev­er­al weeks ago.

Asked about the suc­cess of the Con­fi­dence Pa­trol Walks, where the po­lice go in­to the com­mu­ni­ties and in­ter­act with the pub­lic, Mys­tar replied: “They want to ac­tu­al­ly part­ner with us in the fight against crime and we would make our­selves avail­able to do so.”

Sev­er­al res­i­dents ap­proached the Train­line area at Pin­to Road yes­ter­day said crime didn’t af­fect them but called for more em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and so­cial pro­grammes geared to­wards youth de­vel­op­ment.

Ef­forts to reach Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful as their phones went unan­swered.