The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) launched a new unit tasked with han­dling cas­es of gen­der-based vi­o­lence and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in this coun­try.

The new­ly formed Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU) will fo­cus heav­i­ly on do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es and breach­es of re­strain­ing or­ders. In ad­di­tion to vic­tims mak­ing re­ports to the Unit, mem­bers of the pub­lic with in­for­ma­tion on do­mes­tic abuse al­so can bring that in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice, so they can act on it.

At to­day’s launch, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith apol­o­gised on be­half of the Po­lice Ser­vice for not do­ing enough to deal with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in this coun­try.

The Com­mis­sion­er said the TTPS has made mis­takes in the past, par­tic­u­lar­ly the one of not de­vel­op­ing the GB­VU a long time ago.

“With the es­tab­lish­ment of this Unit, there is now go­ing to be a sys­tem of bet­ter lead­er­ship, bet­ter man­age­ment,” he promis­es. “We are go­ing to mea­sure per­for­mance, and we are go­ing to hold per­sons ac­count­able.”

He adds: “I get a num­ber of re­ports from women who would state that they were not treat­ed as good as they should have been when they go to the po­lice sta­tions. There was one I got just to­day. She went to a po­lice sta­tion, and was spo­ken to by three of­fi­cers. They took her state­ment and then one said: ‘All yuh to­geth­er so long. All yuh try and work it out’. And this is af­ter this woman was bad­ly beat­en.”

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith ad­mits he can­not as­sure the pub­lic that all 7,000 po­lice of­fi­cers will treat with gen­der-based vi­o­lence ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, but he promised the GB­VU will pro­vide a de­gree of sen­si­tiv­i­ty, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and trust.

“That is why, un­for­tu­nate­ly, many women and men have been bad­ly af­fect­ed when they go to the po­lice sta­tions. At times you would hear re­ports that the po­lice of­fi­cer will chase them out of the sta­tion be­cause they are im­prop­er­ly dressed. Or that we have not been able to en­force re­strain­ing or­ders. How we speak to and how we ap­proach in­di­vid­u­als,” the Com­mis­sion­er states. “And even when we deal with same-sex re­la­tion­ships, where in­di­vid­u­als feel in­tim­i­dat­ed and afraid; they do not think they will be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. The im­por­tance of this Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit is to deal with all of these mat­ters.”

On­ly a week ago the In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Re­source Net­work (IWRN) called for a Na­tion­al Reg­istry on Do­mes­tic and Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence, some­thing Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith says would help po­lice of­fi­cers.

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Sto­ry by CARISA LEE