Michelle Loubon

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs says Car­ni­val 2011 has been "great." Yes­ter­day, Gibbs and his en­tourage, in­clud­ing Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams put in an ap­pear­ance at Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. Quizzed on the fes­ti­val, Gibbs said: "To­day has been great. A great Car­ni­val. It's been good. It has been first ex­pe­ri­ence...part of the job." Al­though he had man­aged big events in Cana­da, Gibbs ad­mit­ted that there were chal­lenges, with­out mak­ing di­rect ref­er­ence to thou­sands of mas­quer­aders, mu­sic trucks, spec­ta­tors, ven­dors and stake­hold­ers.

"It is a large event," Gibbs said. In the count­down to Car­ni­val, T&T mourned lit­tle Daniel Guer­ra. Com­ment­ing on T&T's state of pre­pared­ness for the "un­fore­seen," Gibbs said: "We are ful­ly pre­pared. We did an ex­cel­lent job of plan­ning. We have Sautt, fire of­fi­cers, etc." He steered clear of nam­ing the ex­act num­ber of of­fi­cers de­ployed to keep the peace. "A lot...," he vol­un­teered. Ze­ro­ing on his in­duc­tion in­to T&T Car­ni­val, Gibbs said: "I have been able to en­joy the cul­ture and ex­pe­ri­ence it. "I have learned about the his­to­ry and where it came from," he added.