Camille Clarke

Re­tired As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mar­garet Samp­son-Browne, now in charge of the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) yes­ter­day an­nounced an ex­pan­sion of the unit. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has been in ex­is­tence since 2008 with the trans­for­ma­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice. Samp­son-Browne was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's dai­ly press con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain. "We are spread­ing our wings so we will give a holis­tic sup­port for vic­tims to feel em­pow­ered to go to court and face the per­son you are ac­cus­ing to be able to re­duce crime sig­nif­i­cant­ly," Samp­son-Browne said. She added: "We have male of­fi­cers in five sta­tions so men can feel com­fort­able-we want them to be vis­i­ble. From Oc­to­ber 14, we will launch nine vic­tim sup­port groups." "Any­body who is trau­ma­tised by...crime we will work with you."

"Once you make a re­port...we will come and sit with you for state­ments, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades or net­work agen­cies. We are do­ing this to bridge be­tween the po­lice and com­mu­ni­ties," Samp­son-Browne said. "It is a crime fight­ing ini­tia­tive. If crime oc­curs, we kick in, we come in," she said.

Samp­son-Browne said there were three of­fi­cers in San Fer­nan­do, two in Ch­agua­nas, two in Care­nage, two in Mor­vant and two in Arou­ca. Samp­son-Browne said 20 pro­fes­sion­al civil­ians had been work­ing at the mod­el sta­tions across the coun­try. "These were placed at the mod­el sta­tions in San Fer­nan­do, Arou­ca, Mor­vant, Ch­agua­nas and Care­nage. This was bro­ken down to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sex­u­al of­fences," she said. Samp­son-Browne said the cen­tral fam­i­ly who were robbed and sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed had been re­ceiv­ing sup­port from the unit. She said 20 civil­ian of­fi­cers were on call 24 hours a day and from 6 am to 6 pm. They would be as­signed to the San­gre Grande, Fyz­abad Po­lice Sta­tions, An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit and Homi­cide Bu­reau. Samp­son-Browne said over 300 vic­tims of crime re­ceived sup­port from the unit dur­ing the past three years.