Ag CoP: TT can be safe again

The guns that are being used to kill many innocent citizens are not being manufactured here, but are being brought in from countries as far as the United States, down to the string of Latin American countries, the nearest of which is Venezuela.

Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams said the increased use of guns has resulted in an increase in murders. He said the highest seizure of firearms was in 2016, when police recovered 765.

“And even with all those seizures we still have a violent crime problem. Firearms are destroying us,” he said.

Williams was speaking yesterday at the American Chamber of Commerce’s Health, Safety, Security and Environmental (HSSE) conference, “People-Systems-Sustainability: Policing in the 21st Century,” at the Hyatt Regency, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain.

Firearms seizure has been highest in the Northern Division, where the murder rate was also the highest.

Williams said the way forward to help scale down the escalating crime situation was collaboration between the public/private sectors and the police.

“The vision to make TT a safe place is a tall order, but it is achievable,” he said.

He said the Police Service was being restructured so that police officers did not have to wait on a call for assistance, but would be out on patrol, especially in hot spots.

Williams said there has been a reduction of serious crimes by targeting the hot spots, and police vehicles have GPS tracking as a monitoring device so the police would be able to tell where a vehicle is, if it had stopped, or had been turned off.

He said the police were now focusing on the roads and detection of drivers driving under the influence has been increasing. There have been 16,518 such detections for the year so far. On the issue of rogue police officers and those who abuse their authority, Williams said it says a lot about the people who applied for a position in the service and of 11 people who were given polygraph tests as part of their interview, all 11 failed.

He said body cameras were being used as an experiment to document the impact of police-citizen encounters. “We are facing a problem in the quality of citizens. If we work on the young people we have now, we will get the quality of police we want in the service. Youth clubs are one of the most innovative ways to help stop crime, but they require support. Incarcerating the youth is not helping the youth, saving the youth will help the country, but we do not receive the level of support we need from the corporate community, and we need more for the youth club.”