Security guards to patrol with police

Guards from four private security companies are to join police patrolling the streets in some parts of the country.

The Ministry of National Security announced this in a media release on Tuesday.

It said Allied Security, Amalgamated Security Services, Innovative Security Technologies and Protective Agencies Ltd will be used to maintain a presence in communities to be chosen by the ministry.

These same four companies were used as part of the Community Comfort Patrol policy in 2014 and are expected to use the same framework and guidelines this time. Under these rules, the security guards are not mandated to engage directly with those suspected of being criminals.

The initiative will last from April 6 to May 5.

That date is five days after the date given by the Government for the end of the extended stay-at-home rules.

In 2014, 250 "Comfort Patrol" officers were used in 15 residential areas.

The programme was started to patrol areas in north Trinidad, from Carenage to Santa Rosa, and was to be expanded to Chaguans and, in south Trinidad, Pleasantville, Union Hall and Golconda.

In July that year, Dr Keith Rowley, then opposition leader, criticised the patrols at a PNM political meeting, saying untrained, unknown people were driving through neighbourhoods in strange cars pretending to be police.

In 2018 the St Joseph MP, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh, told Parliament that the previous government had paid $120 million to rent vehicles for a year for the Community Comfort Patrol. He said the only beneficiary of the patrols was the company to which the contract was awarded.

The present government abandoned the patrols in 2017.

On Tuesday Newsday spoke to Police Commissioner Gary Griffith, who welcomed the initiative and said he was hopeful the project would better secure TT.

Griffith was minister of national security in the PP governmnent when the patrols were first introduced.

He said while the security officers would not have powers of arrest, the new programme would give the police additional "eyes and ears" in the field while acting as a deterrent to criminals.

"It has been done before and it proved to be very effective back then, where most persons were concerned," Griffith said. "It was not a system used to replace the police.

"The Ministry of National Security embarked on this programme to give the police extra eyes and ears, whereby such patrols from the private security firms will be done in non-hotspot areas like residential areas and others.

"Doing this allows the 85-plus Emergency Response Patrol and task force vehicles to conduct more operations and patrols between hostpot areas and other places where people may not be adhering to the stay-at-home regulations.

"They are not there for law enforcement, to arrest persons, but it provides heavy visibility to assist the police."

Griffith said the security guards would be based in a police station in their designated area, allowing police to keep track of when and where they would be patrolling, to maximise effectiveness.

The Ministry of National Security's release said the companies were chosen on the basis of their manpower, experience and technical capacity.

Contacted for comment, National Security Minister Stuart Young said the initative would follow almost an identical pattern to the one used in 2014.

"The four security firms were chosen as they were selected and used previously by the government in 2014.

"The identical neighbourhoods selected in 2014 to be patrolled are the ones being patrolled, and, importantly, this is being done at a cheaper cost than 2014. The security officers have no more powers than they usually do."

Newsday also spoke to president of the Estate Police Constables Association Derek Richardson.

"They will not be estate constables on this duty, they will be security officers and they are not to engage, they will be to observe and report in."

He added, "It's outside of my remit, in the sense that I can only represent the interest of estate constables. What is happening now is, the government and the private security firms are going to use people who are not represented by any union."

Last month journalists were assaulted by security guards from Amalgamated Security at the San Fernando General Hospital as they tried to get video footage of the hospital car park.

Reporting by Shane Superville