Ali­cia Llanos

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert is cred­it­ing po­lice search­es of both mas­quer­aders and ve­hi­cles for the lack of se­ri­ous and vi­o­lent crimes this Car­ni­val.

Philbert, in­ter­viewed at 10:30 am yes­ter­day on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, said the Po­lice Ser­vice, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force and the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT), rou­tine­ly con­duct­ed search­es for weapons and il­le­gal nar­cotics. He said they found main­ly small weapons on in­di­vid­u­als or which were dis­card­ed in max­is and oth­er ve­hi­cles. James con­firmed per­sons who where found to be in pos­ses­sion of weapons had been ar­rest­ed and most of those ar­rests took place dur­ing J'Ou­vert.

He said a num­ber of mi­nor in­juries were re­port­ed dur­ing J'Ou­vert and those hurt were tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, treat­ed and dis­charged. Re­gard­ing the breathal­yser, he said the use of the breathal­yser had been suc­cess­ful not on­ly in tak­ing drunk dri­vers off the road for Car­ni­val, but al­so act­ed as a de­ter­rent for many par­ty­go­ers to dri­ve while in­tox­i­cat­ed. He said a young man pulled over on Mon­day night said the breathal­yser "saved his life" as he had passed out in the po­lice car on the way to the po­lice sta­tion.

James said a large po­lice pres­ence in and around Port-of-Spain had al­so con­tributed to the safe­ty of rev­ellers and spec­ta­tors on the streets for Car­ni­val. He said the lack of vi­o­lent crimes could be cred­it­ed to the search­es. He al­so thanked the cit­i­zens who will­ful­ly com­plied with the au­thor­i­ties search­es.