Griffith: Police up to the job

POLICE Commissioner Gary Griffith yesterday said the police service is capable of its mandate, saying if there were a repeat of the 1990 coup, it would be dealt within seven minutes.

“If there is anything in resemblance of 1990 that took seven days to be dealt with, (under) this Commissioner of Police and this TTPS, it will not take seven days next time around: it will take seven minutes," he declared.

“People made claims that we are militarising the Police Service, but we have found 70 police services across the world who use camouflage uniforms. People who have probably never travelled beyond Tobago would not know what happens worldwide.”

Speaking at the police weekly briefing at the Police Administration building, Sackville Street, Port of Spain, Griffith said the service was not just about policing on the streets but, at times, highly trained elite units were mandated to be involved in very volatile situations. Griffith said dealing with them could not be done by police in regular plain clothes.

“Unfortunately, people will try to bury their heads in the sand and not realise the concerns of what we are seeing.”

The NGO Fixin T&T had raised concern about police including the CoP, a former soldier, wearing camouflage uniforms.

Griffith said the police had partnered with popular entertainment app D’Junction to provide critical information for Carnival. He said the app allowed people to find police stations easily in all nine divisions, as well as police posts in Port of Spain and San Fernando.

“Every event that we have been conducting, we have been treating it as an operation. It is not business as usual and, so far, we have a 100 per cent success rate. I wish to commend each member of the TTPS in their performance of their duties.

“I think it is safe to say that the public has felt safer. We have seen it not just based on the statistics, but the fact that what we have done is not just to make sure you could be safe, but to make sure the fear of crime could be eliminated.”

Griffith said the TTPS mission was to make this the safest Carnival in the history of TT.

He said one of the things the police were putting in place was four drones which would be able to provide information in real time to an operational centre.

“We will be able to have a visual concept of every operation throughout the event from the air. The use of the drones is much cheaper than the use of helicopters. The drones will be providing information in real time being fed back to a national operation centre. This will allow the units on the ground to know exactly what is happening so that we can mobilise (for) the ground situation that may take place.”

Griffith said the public could look out for different operations by the police throughout the country during the Carnival season.

Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police Deodat Dulalchan, Gold Commander for Carnival, said there would be an estimated 6,000 police offers deployed for Carnival, with approximately 1,600 in Port of Spain alone.