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Monday, March 17, 2025

Act­ing CoP promis­es safe Car­ni­val

Multiple police units out in full force

by

Otto Carrington
15 days ago
20250302
Acting CoP Junior Benjamin greets spectators during the Junior Carnival Parade of the Bands at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Acting CoP Junior Benjamin greets spectators during the Junior Carnival Parade of the Bands at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Vashti Singh

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is set to be out in full force dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin yes­ter­day as­sured the pub­lic that safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are top pri­or­i­ties.

With over 70 ar­rests al­ready made as the Gov­ern­ment en­forces State of Emer­gency (SoE) reg­u­la­tions, the po­lice are tak­ing a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to any­one at­tempt­ing to dis­rupt the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties.

“We are go­ing to be in our num­bers. We are go­ing to be look­ing at all those pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers. We al­ready have about 70 or more per­sons who have been ar­rest­ed, and we are look­ing for oth­ers be­cause we are say­ing that no one is to come and dis­rupt the peace and tran­quil­i­ty of these events,” said Ben­jamin.

The SOE reg­u­la­tions have grant­ed ad­di­tion­al pow­ers to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, al­low­ing for a strate­gic and en­hanced law en­force­ment re­sponse. Ben­jamin ex­pressed con­fi­dence in achiev­ing op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence and high­light­ed the de­ploy­ment of of­fi­cers across var­i­ous units.

“One of the things that we con­tin­ue to do is seek to in­crease our de­ploy­ment. So, we even have spe­cial regime of­fi­cers com­ing on board. We have the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice that will be com­ing on board, along with tran­sit of­fi­cers. We al­so have traf­fic war­dens help­ing us. Again, be­cause of the SoE, we have the De­fence Force hav­ing that pow­er for us and al­so hav­ing the same pow­ers as po­lice of­fi­cers,” he stat­ed.

Ben­jamin as­sured the pub­lic that any of­fend­ers would be dealt with de­ci­sive­ly, re­in­forc­ing the mes­sage that the events are off-lim­its for trou­ble­mak­ers.

“Any­one found com­mit­ting such an of­fence, we will be deal­ing with them very de­ci­sive­ly. But right now, we are say­ing these events are off-lim­its for those per­sons. But for peo­ple who want to come and tru­ly en­joy the sea­son, we are say­ing feel free to come be­cause safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are our pri­or­i­ty.”

He al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of re­build­ing trust be­tween the pub­lic and law en­force­ment, not­ing the pos­i­tive re­cep­tion he re­ceived from cit­i­zens dur­ing the 2025 Ju­nior Pa­rade of the Bands at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

“I con­tin­ue to feel re­al­ly com­fort­ed know­ing that per­sons are reach­ing out to the po­lice and see­ing the pos­i­tive ap­proach giv­en to the po­lice, even as we con­tin­ue to do these op­er­a­tions. And to­day was no ex­cep­tion. Meet­ing the peo­ple is what I love to do, and it was re­al­ly good to see that pos­i­tive re­cep­tion from the pub­lic,” Ben­jamin said.

En­cour­ag­ing co­op­er­a­tion, the com­mis­sion­er called for stronger com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships in crime pre­ven­tion, aim­ing to re­duce both crime and the fear of crime.

“We want to en­cour­age the pub­lic to work with us. We need their sup­port, and we want to work with them. There­fore, as we con­tin­ue to build com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment and strength­en our part­ner­ship, we be­lieve that we will not just re­duce crime, but we will re­duce the fear of crime, which is so im­por­tant at this time.”


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