Fol­low­ing plans for a height­ened po­lice pres­ence, in­clud­ing joint po­lice and army pa­trols in ar­eas de­scribed as hot spots, the Po­lice Ser­vice says it will be ap­ply­ing the full force of the law to bring down crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

So far in 2024, some 324 peo­ple have been killed, with 43 of those mur­ders oc­cur­ring in Ju­ly alone.

Not­ing that many crimes and killings are com­mit­ted us­ing il­le­gal weapons, TTPS Me­dia Am­bas­sador ASP Ra­jesh Lal re­mind­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic that po­lice of­fi­cers are with­in their right to con­duct search­es.

“One of the pow­ers the po­lice have is to stop any ve­hi­cle on any pub­lic road­way and search that ve­hi­cle.  When we search the ve­hi­cle and noth­ing is found, we al­so have the pow­er to search all the per­sons with­in that ve­hi­cle, with­out any need for rea­son­able cause,” ASP Lal ex­plained.

“So, when the po­lice stop a ve­hi­cle, and we in­di­cate we are ex­er­cis­ing our pow­ers un­der the Firearms Act to search for firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, the law gives us the pow­er to do that,” he said.

A guest on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew to­day, the TTPS Me­dia Am­bas­sador urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties.

He al­so asked cit­i­zens for their un­der­stand­ing, as well as their co­op­er­a­tion when of­fi­cers are do­ing search­es.

“You may be in­con­ve­nienced in some way or the oth­er,” ASP Lal said, “but we are ask­ing you to ex­er­cise pa­tience and com­ply with the in­struc­tions of the po­lice of­fi­cers.”

He not­ed that fail­ing to com­ply with those in­struc­tions to stop and sub­mit to a search, or dri­ving off when stopped by the po­lice, con­sti­tute of­fences.  In ad­di­tion, oth­er se­ri­ous of­fences in­clude as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, re­sist­ing or ob­struct­ing an of­fi­cer, or even threat­en­ing an of­fi­cer while they are at­tempt­ing to car­ry out their du­ties.