Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young says that tech­nol­o­gy will dri­ve the fight against crime in To­ba­go.

The Min­is­ter made the com­ment dur­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of the new Shir­van Road Po­lice Sta­tion on yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Young, the TTPS plans to “pack the fa­cil­i­ty with tech­nol­o­gy.”

“To­ba­go is not go­ing to be left be­hind as you have heard the com­mis­sion­er and my­self say the on­ly way to ef­fec­tive­ly fight crime, one of the pil­lars is the util­i­sa­tion of tech­nol­o­gy.”

He said the gov­ern­ment al­so plans to in­crease the num­ber of CCTV cam­eras through­out To­ba­go, which will be in­te­grat­ed in­to the na­tion­al sys­tem.

“I’ve al­so asked that To­ba­go feed di­rect­ly in­to our Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Fu­sion Cen­tre so that you form part of our whole in­tel­li­gence net.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter, there has been an “in­crease in in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions” in To­ba­go.

He al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed all na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces for what he de­scribed as a “rev­o­lu­tion” and “re-en­er­gi­sa­tion” of the Po­lice Ser­vice na­tion­al­ly. He en­cour­aged po­lice of­fi­cers to stay fo­cussed and con­tin­ue to act with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law.

“Ig­nore the stu­pid con­ver­sa­tions where they would talk about how the com­mis­sion­er would dress or how a com­mis­sion­er would go about his du­ty.”

The Min­is­ter said his team would con­tin­ue to “press on” in the fight against crime.

The Shir­van Road Po­lice Sta­tion was of­fi­cial­ly opened, re­plac­ing the Old Grange Po­lice Sta­tion.

Young said, the for­mal­i­ty was an his­toric one for Trinidad and To­ba­go, stat­ing that the mod­ern fa­cil­i­ty was the best in the Caribbean.

The Rox­bor­ough Po­lice sta­tion is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion and will be hand­ed over to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly soon.

Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Sharon Blake-Clarke, who rep­re­sent­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith who was un­able to at­tend due to an in­jury, said sev­er­al polic­ing units would be housed at the new sta­tion in­clud­ing a cen­tral CID de­part­ment and a Ju­ve­nile Book­ing De­part­ment.

“Mi­nors will be in­ter­viewed charged and re­ceive bail un­der spe­cial pro­ce­dures in com­pli­ance with the judges’ rul­ing for chil­dren and in keep­ing with the con­ven­tion set out in the by the Unit­ed Na­tions.”

The new­ly-formed Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol (ERP), which utilis­es po­lice ve­hi­cles out­fit­ted with cam­eras, will al­so be housed at the Shir­van Road Po­lice Sta­tion.