Gail Alexan­der

Pa­trol of­fi­cers will have new uni­forms by mid-year, an on­line fa­cil­i­ty for quick re­port­ing of crimes and in­tro­duc­tion of Shot Spot­ter tech­nol­o­gy to pin­point the lo­ca­tion of a gun­shot im­me­di­ate­ly as it’s fired are among T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ini­tia­tives be­ing in­tro­duced in the com­ing months, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.

“Sev­er­al new de­vel­op­ments will emerge this year in terms of mak­ing the TTPS more ef­fi­cient and geared to­wards bet­ter meet­ing the pub­lic’s needs,” he said.

Re­designed pa­trol po­lice uni­forms have been in the works for well over five years. Pa­trol of­fi­cers cur­rent­ly wear grey short-sleeved shirts or long-sleeved blue shirts, while oth­er di­vi­sions wear dif­fer­ent uni­forms. Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) of­fi­cers wear tac­ti­cal heavy-du­ty gear while mem­bers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) wear cam­ou­flage type uni­forms. The lat­ter was in­tro­duced last year.

Grif­fith said the GEB and SORT uni­forms won’t change but the wear for the rest of TTPS has been re­designed. The new uni­form in­cludes a light­weight shirt, sil­ver po­lice badge for easy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and a util­i­ty belt for hold­ing min­i­mum-force equip­ment—tasers, pep­per spray, rub­ber bul­lets—plus a ra­dio.

He ex­plained: “It’s a more cus­tomer-friend­ly de­sign sim­i­lar to what’s used by US and UK po­lice. I’ve sent the pat­tern and costs to Cab­i­net and am await­ing ap­proval.”

TTPS will al­so get the ben­e­fit of Shot Spot­ter tech­nol­o­gy which is used in the US.

“The sen­sor sys­tem is placed in strate­gic lo­ca­tions around a coun­try and in­for­ma­tion can be picked up via sound and cam­eras soon as a shot is fired. This can be fed to a cen­tre. The tech­nol­o­gy can al­so track the type of weapon used, has sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for pin­point­ing gangs and their ac­tiv­i­ties. It has been used in Los An­ge­les and New York for this,” Grif­fith said.

On­line re­port­ing of crime will al­so be­come avail­able soon with a new TTPS web­site.

The Com­mis­sion­er said: “Some peo­ple don’t like to go to po­lice sta­tions to re­port crimes and peo­ple of­ten want to re­port a crime as it hap­pens. This fa­cil­i­ty caters to this. On­line re­port­ing will al­so free up po­lice to do more polic­ing. It al­so sup­ports the ‘see some­thing, say some­thing’ dri­ve.”

Grif­fith de­fend­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of ar­moured per­son­nel car­ri­ers for hotspot ar­eas.

“If any­one has prob­lems with this, it means they’re not con­cerned about of­fi­cers’ safe­ty. I’m await­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil ap­proval. We’ve seen the need for this when cul­prits were shoot­ing at po­lice for hours (in Ch­agua­nas) and sim­i­lar oth­er in­ci­dents,” he said.

A longer-term plan is the con­struc­tion of TTPS Po­lice Head­quar­ters.

“We nev­er had a TTPS Head­quar­ters. What we have is a po­lice ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing, built af­ter TTPS head­quar­ters was de­stroyed in 1990. We cur­rent­ly spend mil­lions in rent for var­i­ous po­lice di­vi­sions scat­tered from Aranguez to Port-of-Spain, mak­ing co-or­di­na­tion dif­fi­cult. We in­tend to build the Head­quar­ters at the St James Train­ing base where land is avail­able and all units can have a cen­tralised lo­ca­tion in a ten-storey build­ing. I’m seek­ing ap­proval for this,” he said.

Grif­fith’s al­so wait­ing for the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to sub­mit a list of the most high-risk schools to pro­vide a new School Se­cu­ri­ty Unit and is fi­nal­is­ing a Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit. There are al­so plans to im­prove the lights on po­lice ve­hi­cles which Grif­fith said peo­ple have com­plained are too bright.