SASCHA WIL­SON

With an up­surge in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence-re­lat­ed mur­ders this year, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer is ad­vis­ing men to seek help from the po­lice rather than re­sort to vi­o­lence.

This was one of the mes­sages com­ing out of a street pro­ces­sion and in­ter­faith ser­vice by the South­ern Di­vi­sion of the T&T Po­lice and Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vices yes­ter­day in cel­e­bra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day.

As of Thurs­day, 11 women had been mur­dered for the year. Nine of them were al­leged­ly killed by their in­ti­mate part­ners.

“To the men out there, cau­tion, cau­tion. Seek us out and we will as­sist you the best way we can,” said act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Floris Hodge-Grif­fith in an in­ter­view with re­porters fol­low­ing the pro­ces­sion in San Fer­nan­do.

In an at­tempt to curb do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, she said of­fi­cers have been vis­it­ing var­i­ous ar­eas try­ing to reach out to men.

Not­ing that this ini­tia­tive was al­so done in Port-of- Spain, she said, “I want to let them know we un­der­stand that they too have is­sues and they must look for as­sis­tance rather than vi­o­lence. I want them to seek us out for every is­sue. We are here to pro­tect and serve every­one, male and fe­male.”

She said the march was im­por­tant to re­mind the cit­i­zen­ry and all women that women po­lice of­fi­cers re­main strong and com­mit­ted to mak­ing com­mu­ni­ties safe.

Se­nior Supt Wayne Mo­hammed had a mes­sage for men and women. He ad­vised women to know their val­ue, their pur­pose and re­spect them­selves.

“I want to tell the men of T&T to re­spect women. Treat women like they ought to be treat­ed, treat them with love and re­spect,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the in­ter­faith ser­vice at the Pro-Cathe­dral of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help parish, Hodge-Grif­fith said over the years the TTPS has worked stead­fast­ly to­wards gen­der equal­i­ty.

Re­call­ing that the first 12 women en­tered the Po­lice Ser­vice in 1955, she said cur­rent­ly there are thou­sands of fe­male of­fi­cers and many of them hold lead­er­ship po­si­tions.

To her fe­male col­leagues, she said, “We are in a unique po­si­tion to be our sis­ter’s keep­er. We can ac­tive­ly choose to chal­lenge all the stereo­types which lead to vic­tim sham­ing of women, we can fight ex­ist­ing bi­as­es and al­low our fe­male cit­i­zens the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have fair chances through­out so­ci­ety.”

Hodge-Grif­fith al­so urged them to unite and em­pow­er one an­oth­er. Al­so par­tic­i­pat­ing in the march were Se­nior Supt of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ce­cil San­tana, San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo, civil­ian staff from the Po­lice Ser­vice, fire of­fi­cers, nurs­es and traf­fic war­dens.