Al­most a decade lat­er, the new­ly de­signed po­lice uni­forms will be in­tro­duced to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice with­in the next few months, says Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Speak­ing at a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing held at the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the new uni­forms will be more blue and pix­el grey and were part of the re-imag­ing of the TTPS.

“The uni­form change is part of the trans­for­ma­tion of the TTPS. It will have a belt which will al­low the of­fi­cer to utilise the min­i­mum use of force pol­i­cy, from the ra­dio, ba­ton, tasers, pep­per spray, rub­ber bul­lets, to the fi­nal use which is your firearm. We will en­sure that of­fi­cers are trained so that they can utilise the tools for the min­i­mum use of force,” Grif­fith said.

He added that the ba­ton will no longer be used as a means of in­flict­ing pain but will be utilised to sub­due in­di­vid­u­als.

Grif­fith not­ed that the spe­cial­ly de­signed uni­forms will be out­fit­ted with a badge so that the cit­i­zen­ry will be able to clear­ly iden­ti­fy the of­fi­cer.

He ex­plained that there is a view that the TTPS is all about “harsh law en­force­ment, hard tar­get­ing de­ter­rents, rapid re­sponse, high vis­i­bil­i­ty and ar­rest­ing.”

“This is not al­ways the case as our job is to have sec­ondary crime pre­ven­tion which is the use of so­cial av­enues to get peo­ple to turn away crime,” Grif­fith said.

He added that he was try­ing to change the con­cept of ar­ro­gance which some po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to dis­play to the pub­lic. Grif­fith en­cour­aged the pub­lic to re­port these of­fi­cers so that they could get a gen­tle re­minder of prop­er cus­tomer ser­vice.

Asked what was the cost of the new uni­forms, Grif­fith said he could not say as com­pa­nies had not yet ten­dered for the uni­forms.

He not­ed that they were still work­ing on the de­sign of the new uni­forms for the First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers.

Po­lice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Michael Seales said the new uni­forms have tech­ni­cal fea­tures which make them hard­er to repli­cate by crim­i­nals.

Drones, boats to pa­trol coast

The CoP said dur­ing his meet­ing with MP Rush­ton Paray a re­quest was made for more pa­trols on the 17 miles beach-front where beach house guests are of­ten robbed and beat­en.

Com­mu­ni­ty Lia­sion of­fi­cer of British Pe­tro­le­um Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) Matthew Pierre said bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty should be pro­vid­ed to safe­guard en­er­gy as­sets in the east­ern re­gion while chair­man of the Rio Claro Her­itage Fes­ti­val Com­mit­tee Ako Mu­to­ta called for the re-es­tab­lish­ing of the Po­lice Ma­rine Branch.

How­ev­er, Grif­fith said a cost ben­e­fit analy­sis showed that re-es­tab­lish­ment of the Ma­rine Branch was not fea­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly in the East coasts where the At­lantic Ocean churns in a rough, chop­py mass.

Say­ing the Coast Guard al­ready had ves­sels to pa­trol the seas, Grif­fith said the TTPS will ac­quire flat bot­tomed boats to pa­trol the rivers and in­lets near the coasts.

He al­so said that drones will be utilised to mon­i­tor the coasts.