A former head of the National Operations Centre (NOC), Garvin Heerah has called for a zonal curfew or a zonal state of emergency as an immediate initiative to help deal with the reduction of crime in T&T.
Heerah was speaking on the recent ranking of T&T as the 6th country making it one of the most violent countries in the world as per capita.
Just on Monday, nine murders were recorded bringing the murder toll to 281.
He was a guest on Tuesday’s edition of CNC3’s The Morning Brew.
Heerah said, however, that the zonal curfew must be properly managed and coordinated from a system that is inter-agency and one that has a command, control and coordination aspect.
“Platforms in the past like the NOC would have run operations that would have concentrated in specific areas. We have the technology, we have the resources and I am positive that we have the operational thinking powers that can establish a zonal curfew, a zonal state of emergency to threat with the issues,” Heerah said.
He also added that there needs to be incorporated with that “surgical operations” that are fully intelligence-led.
Heerah said whilst more efforts need to be placed on deterrents, including high visibility he added that there need to also be high vigilance and suggested crime mapping and analytics to assist in predictive policing.
He also said that the Commissioner of Police needs to accelerate his initiative of establishing a covert policing unit.