RYAN BA­CHOO

Con­tent Dis­tri­b­u­tion Ed­i­tor

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Re­tired act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams says com­mu­ni­ty watch groups work­ing along­side the po­lice should be en­cour­aged and is a way of re­duc­ing the crime that has plagued the na­tion.

Williams was speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 37th An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) and Con­fer­ence of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

Ear­li­er this month, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed on Fe­lic­i­ty res­i­dents who had in­sti­tut­ed night­ly com­mu­ni­ty pa­trols on a vol­un­tary ba­sis to guard their com­mu­ni­ty against crim­i­nals.

Williams, who served as Com­mis­sion­er Po­lice for six years, said such moves are pos­i­tive ones in the fight against crime.

“The cit­i­zens are now recog­nis­ing that it is not about the po­lice stand­ing on their own, it is about how the po­lice and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens can part­ner to ad­dress what is re­ferred to as that small el­e­ment of the crim­i­nals, and I’m see­ing that is hap­pen­ing across T&T,” Williams said.

Williams, who him­self was a po­lice of­fi­cer for 37 years across nu­mer­ous di­vi­sions, sec­tions and branch­es of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), said such prac­tice should be en­cour­aged, as it can bear fruit across the na­tion.

He said, “The or­gan­i­sa­tion and the na­tion are strug­gling but there are some pos­i­tive lights and I see it fea­tured in the very said me­dia as I read and watch. Cit­i­zens are get­ting to­geth­er and they’re high­light­ing work­ing part­ner­ships, whether it is in Tu­na­puna, Mt Lam­bert, Fe­lic­i­ty, Cou­va, Princes Town, wher­ev­er it is, there is a move­ment tak­ing place right now and I call it a pos­i­tive move­ment with which we need to en­cour­age be­cause it gives hope that the cit­i­zens are recog­nis­ing it is about work­ing to­geth­er with the po­lice to push back against the crim­i­nals.”

He added, “It is in that set­ting cit­i­zens are say­ing ‘we have a role to play and we are play­ing this role to en­sure that crim­i­nals do not tar­get us’, so peo­ple re­fer to it as hard­en­ing tar­gets and the ac­tiv­i­ties that they do, each one look­ing af­ter each one in net­work group­ings like What­sApp and all those things are ben­e­fit­ing the com­mu­ni­ties and if it spreads, you would find that the en­tire na­tion will be ben­e­fit­ing.”

On the back of 10 mur­ders over the week­end, Williams was al­so asked if the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try has to get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter.

“We had a bad year in 2022. With 605 mur­ders, you don’t re­al­ly want things to get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter. That’s as bad as you would want it. You want to see progress, and 2023 should be a sign of progress,” Williams replied.

Williams al­so be­lieves there are ben­e­fits to hav­ing a re­gion­al and in­te­grat­ed ap­proach to fight­ing crime. He is hop­ing that in the wake of the Re­gion­al Crime Sym­po­sium in April, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers at­tend­ing the cur­rent con­fer­ence “can take it like a ba­ton pass­ing from what the pol­i­cy di­rec­tions were at the sym­po­sium and dis­cuss im­ple­ment­ing some of those poli­cies across the re­gion.”

He, how­ev­er, warned that while the pub­lic is im­pa­tient for re­sults in the fight against crime, it will take some time.

“It does not work in the con­text of im­me­di­ate fix. Over time, you can progress to the point where you want to be but a lot of times, peo­ple want things done now and it doesn’t work that way. Nowhere in the world it works like that. It takes a long time for you to get to that point where things are so bad and to re­verse that, it will al­so take a while. But, it is about de­lib­er­ate ef­fort in one pos­i­tive di­rec­tion that can get you there,” the re­tired CoP said.

Mean­while, As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (AC­CP) pres­i­dent, Ed­vin Mar­tin, al­so backed com­mu­ni­ties work­ing along­side the po­lice.

Mar­tin, who is al­so Grena­da’s Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, said, “We need the com­mu­ni­ty be­hind us. The po­lice can­not solve and ad­dress this is­sue by them­selves. If the com­mu­ni­ty don’t get in­volved, we can’t achieve ul­ti­mate safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty be­cause the com­mu­ni­ty knows who is caus­ing the prob­lem. The com­mu­ni­ty knows what can be done to re­solve these is­sues and if we achieve a bet­ter part­ner­ship with the com­mu­ni­ty, I am quite sure we will cre­ate safer so­ci­eties in all coun­tries across the re­gion.”