A cam­paign was launched yes­ter­day to raise pub­lic aware­ness of abuse and crimes com­mit­ted against the dis­abled. It took the form of an aware­ness march through the streets of Port-of-Spain held joint­ly by the WASA Sports and Cul­tur­al Club and the Caribbean Util­i­ties Em­ploy­ees As­so­ci­a­tion.

The event fea­tured rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the lo­cal and Caribbean law en­force­ment com­mu­ni­ty, fam­i­ly mem­bers, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Law En­force­ment Torch Run Com­mit­tee (LETRC) who are join­ing forces to raise funds for the Spe­cial Olympics of T&T and are cam­paign­ing for the erad­i­ca­tion of the word "re­tard."

Speak­ing in sup­port of the ini­tia­tive yes­ter­day, po­lice pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer In­sp Wayne Mys­tar said:"The pub­lic must know that mem­bers of the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled com­mu­ni­ty are just like every­one else and they need the re­spect that is due them and rais­ing this lev­el of aware­ness is very im­por­tant."

He said yes­ter­day's event was al­so in keep­ing with one of the goals of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice for more in­ter­ac­tions be­tween law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and the pub­lic. He said the spe­cial project was a clas­sic ex­am­ple of how po­lice of­fi­cers can part­ner with mem­bers of the De­fence Force, Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps, NGOs and vol­un­teers for a wor­thy cause.

LETRC di­rec­tor In­sp Richard Tay­lor ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion at the large turnout of par­tic­i­pants, in­clud­ing Caribbean law en­force­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives. He said the march gave cit­i­zens an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the men and women of the var­i­ous pro­tec­tive ser­vices in a dif­fer­ent light.Oth­er Caribbean coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ing in the event were An­guil­la, An­tigua, Montser­rat, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, Grena­da, Do­mini­ca, St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.