Mar­tin George

Here at the 2010 Crimestop­pers In­ter­na­tion­al train­ing Con­fer­ence in Hal­i­fax, No­va Sco­tia, there is a wealth of in­for­ma­tion be­ing dis­sem­i­nat­ed about the lat­est ad­vances in crime fight­ing and crime fight­ing tech­niques and it makes you re­alise just how far we have to go in terms of get­ting up to speed with the busi­ness of crime fight­ing in T&T. There has been re­cent men­tion by our At­tor­ney Gen­er­al about re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion via Face­book in re­spect of in­for­ma­tion on Gov­ern­ment Min­istries where cor­rup­tion and il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty was ram­pant and in­ter­est­ing­ly enough, one of the best ses­sions we had for the en­tire con­fer­ence was the re­ceiv­ing of tips and in­for­ma­tion on crimes via Face­book, Twit­ter and oth­er so­cial me­dia net­work­ing sites.

Even YouTube, which in Trinidad and To­ba­go has be­come fa­mous for fea­tur­ing young school-age per­form­ing star­lets, has been turned to a good use by pro­vid­ing tips and in­for­ma­tion on crimes and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty by many of the Crimestop­pers pro­grammes around the world. We need to get with it and un­der­stand that crimes and crim­i­nals are not sit­ting twid­dling their thumbs, they are with it and are of­ten on the cut­ting edge of tech­nol­o­gy and are of­ten up to date with the lat­est im­prove­ments so if our law en­force­ment agen­cies in­tend to not lose this bat­tle, they need get with it and keep up.

Re­cent­ly the ODPM has in­tro­duced to the pub­lic the idea of mo­bile alerts to cit­i­zens in the case of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and one of the ideas which, as a mem­ber of our Crimestop­pers Board, I would like to see in­tro­duced with the as­sis­tance of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, has been the pos­si­bil­i­ty of us set­ting up some­thing akin to an am­ber alert.

Mo­bile ser­vice providers

The way this could work is for ex­am­ple, if there is say, a rob­bery in the vicin­i­ty of a busi­ness place in In­de­pen­dence Square, the mo­bile ser­vice providers can im­me­di­ate­ly send out a re­strict­ed, lo­calised alert, to all mo­bile phones with­in the vicin­i­ty of one or two cell tow­ers in the area say­ing for ex­am­ple: "Rob­bery at fast food out­let on In­de­pen­dence square at 10:30 am. Two sus­pects armed and dan­ger­ous dressed in blue jeans with black T-shirt and brown jeans with red vest, both wear­ing sneak­ers head­ed to­wards green B-14 get­away car. Please take pre­cau­tions for your per­son­al safe­ty and if you have any in­for­ma­tion please don't in­ter­vene, call Crimestop­pers 800-TIPS."

Not on­ly does some­thing like this, give cit­i­zens in the area an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take ex­tra pre­cau­tions for their im­me­di­ate safe­ty, it al­so al­lows per­sons who may be head­ed in­to that area to ei­ther de­lay or de­fer such plans or to ex­er­cise ex­tra vig­i­lance when do­ing so.

There is al­so the ad­di­tion­al ad­van­tage in that you can now have thou­sands of pairs of eyes on the look­out im­me­di­ate­ly for these sus­pects or for any­thing which may ap­pear sus­pi­cious linked to this crime. This will help to great­ly in­crease the de­tec­tion rate of our Po­lice Ser­vice, some­thing which we have be­moaned and be­rat­ed for years.

If we can have peo­ple on the look­out, in re­al time, short­ly af­ter these in­ci­dents hap­pen, it great­ly in­creas­es the chances of the per­pe­tra­tors get­ting spot­ted and caught. It just hap­pened to be for­tu­nate that there was that ve­hi­cle with the sol­diers present close by when the ban­dits shot po­lice Of­fi­cer Ja­son Thomas and were able to spot the killers and ef­fect an ar­rest. This just hap­pened to be a co­in­ci­dence that for­tu­nate­ly led to the ar­rest of the per­pe­tra­tors. We can­not con­tin­ue to re­ly on luck or co­in­ci­dence.

If we have a sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed where­by there are im­me­di­ate alerts, it would be a bit of a nui­sance to pri­vate cit­i­zens and may be seen by some as an in­va­sion of their pri­va­cy, but when one con­sid­ers the trade off, in that these same cit­i­zens in that lo­calised area would be the on­ly ones alert­ed, they would al­so be able to take pre­cau­tions for their per­son­al safe­ty and there is al­so the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­one may see or ob­serve some­thing which may lead to a tip or some in­for­ma­tion which can re­sult in the ar­rest of the sus­pects.

Peo­ple on the look­out

Cit­i­zens in that lo­cale who are alert­ed, may call and alert their friends and rel­a­tives in sur­round­ing ar­eas so there would be even more peo­ple on the look­out for these ban­dits. The ban­dits them­selves would get the text in­fo so they would feel more pur­sued, more pres­sured in­to mak­ing mis­takes or to re­veal them­selves through their pan­ic be­cause they would re­alise that their de­scrip­tion is out there and that there may be thou­sands of eyes look­ing at them or on the look­out for them.

The de­scrip­tion of the per­pe­tra­tors sent out by the Po­lice over the mo­bile net­works can be as de­tailed or as brief as the Po­lice see fit for the cir­cum­stances and can in­clude height, skin colour, hair type and oth­er iden­ti­fy­ing marks and could, where nec­es­sary in­clude a full de­scrip­tion of the get­away ve­hi­cle so that thou­sands of per­sons on the high­way, the main road or the bus route could be on the look­out for these sus­pects.

This is but one in a se­ries of mea­sures which can be eas­i­ly im­ple­ment­ed, at lit­tle or no cost to the Gov­ern­ment and which will def­i­nite­ly have an im­me­di­ate im­pact on the de­tec­tion rate of crimes and can ac­tu­al­ly start to act as a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nals in this fight against crime �our very own ver­sion of the Am­ber Alert.