Richard?Lord

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ann Marie Al­leyne-Daly says yes­ter­day's na­tion­wide road­blocks were not sanc­tioned by the lead­er­ship of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the head­quar­ters of the TTPS in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Al­leyne-Daly al­so apol­o­gised to cit­i­zens for the in­con­ve­nience caused and said a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­mis­sioned to de­ter­mine if the ac­tion was linked in any way to the un­re­solved ne­go­ti­a­tions for in­creased salaries for po­lice.

"We apol­o­gise for the sit­u­a­tion," she said, adding that act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er Vin­cel Ed­wards has been giv­en 14 days to get an­swers on yes­ter­day's ac­tion, which caused ma­jor dis­rup­tion in the sev­er­al ar­eas of op­er­a­tions across the coun­try.Al­leyne-Daly ad­mit­ted that the po­lice lead­er­ship was un­aware of plans for yes­ter­day's road­blocks."Had we known about this we would have tak­en mea­sures. It went be­yond what is nor­mal," she added.

But de­spite that, she al­so said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier Carl Al­fon­so did not have the au­thor­i­ty to tell the of­fi­cers to "stand down" in the ex­er­cis­es.Al­fon­so had re­port­ed­ly post­ed the di­rec­tive on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day as thou­sands re­spond­ed an­gri­ly to the na­tion­wide road­blocks.Talks be­tween the Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer have bro­ken down as of­fi­cers have re­ject­ed the of­fer made by the CPO.

Yes­ter­day's road­blocks af­fect­ed thou­sands of cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing stu­dents. Some schools dis­missed class­es by lunchtime as the teach­ers and oth­er staff were un­able to get to work.Po­lice con­duct­ed a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise along the East West Cor­ri­dor last week but that did not cause the kind of dis­rup­tion of yes­ter­day's event. On that oc­ca­sion, the po­lice said they were look­ing for sus­pects in a white ve­hi­cle who had com­mit­ted il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty in cen­tral Trinidad.

Yes­ter­day, Al­leyne-Daly said it was nor­mal for the TTPS to have "to­tal polic­ing days," which in­volved set­ting up road­blocks as an an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive. She said such ac­tions were nor­mal­ly sanc­tioned by op­er­a­tional in­spec­tors.But fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's oc­cur­rence, Al­leyne-Daly said with im­me­di­ate ef­fect the au­thor­i­ty to ini­ti­ate road check ex­er­cis­es would be tak­en away from in­spec­tors and "re­side on­ly with the di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders and heads of sec­tions and branch­es."

Too much dis­rup­tion

In dis­tanc­ing the TTPS from yes­ter­day's ac­tion, Al­leyne-Daly said it should not have caused so much in­con­ve­nience to the trav­el­ling pub­lic.She said while there would be more "to­tal polic­ing days" in fu­ture, it would not be on such a mag­ni­tude on a dai­ly ba­sis and would be held in dif­fer­ent ar­eas in dif­fer­ent di­vi­sions.Al­leyne-Daly said the ex­ec­u­tive was aware of the on­go­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO, adding the ex­ec­u­tive was in sup­port of the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process.

She was not pre­pared to re­veal what sanc­tions could be placed on the of­fi­cers if the in­ves­ti­ga­tion showed the ac­tion was in breach of po­lice reg­u­la­tions, not­ing she did not want to pre-empt the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.Asked about the suc­cess of yes­ter­day's ini­tia­tive, Al­leyne-Daly said she was un­aware of any ar­rests dur­ing the ex­er­cise.She said the ex­er­cise, which be­gan at 5 am, in­volved of­fi­cers from every di­vi­sion and po­lice would al­so in­ves­ti­gate re­ports of peo­ple in the road­block at Beetham Gar­dens be­ing robbed.

Al­leyne-Daly said she had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, who is abroad, on the mat­ter and he was in sup­port of the ac­tion be­ing tak­en by the ex­ec­u­tive to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of such ac­tion.She said the po­lice ex­ec­u­tive al­so dis­cussed yes­ter­day's in­ci­dent with Al­fon­so.