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Friday, February 28, 2025

1,000 police mentors coming

by

1644 days ago
20200829
San Fernando East MP Brian Manning and Police Commissioner Gary Griffith at the Tarodale Community Meeting on Thursday night.

San Fernando East MP Brian Manning and Police Commissioner Gary Griffith at the Tarodale Community Meeting on Thursday night.

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RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Rec­og­niz­ing the risks of gang in­fil­tra­tion in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has said he is train­ing 1,000 po­lice of­fi­cers to act as men­tors for dis­ad­van­taged youths.

He was speak­ing at a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing held in Tar­o­dale Gar­dens, Ste Madeleine on Thurs­day night, or­ga­nized by San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning.

Grif­fith said the pro­grammes ti­tled Street Talk will be an im­por­tant tool in the fight against crime. He said crime­fight­ing was be­ing done us­ing a three-pronged ap­proach- pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary meth­ods.

Pri­ma­ry strate­gies in­clude raids, ar­rests, pa­trols, road­block and rapid re­sponse. Ter­tiary meth­ods in­volve the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and sec­ondary meth­ods in­clude so­cial pro­grammes geared at keep­ing the youths away from crime us­ing sport and oth­er ini­tia­tives.

“I have been vo­cif­er­ous to try to find a way to put an end to im­passe to T&T Foot­ball. If T&T foot­ball will crash it will cause a dis­as­ter and a rip­ple ef­fect for young per­sons. It takes away op­por­tu­ni­ties and hav­ing men­tors and role mod­els in the com­mu­ni­ties. If these young peo­ple have no na­tion­al foot­baller to look up to, they will look at gang mem­bers as their role mod­el,” he said.

He not­ed that the Street Talk pro­gramme will reach out to cer­tain youths. 

“Some­one who is seen as a delin­quent, a school dropout or some­one charged for a mi­nor of­fence. If we don’t grab them and guide them prop­er­ly we can lose them,” he said.

He added that sports pro­vide the nec­es­sary char­ac­ter traits to be a good cit­i­zen.

“It re­quires dili­gence, punc­tu­al­i­ty, dis­ci­pline, tac­tics, lead­er­ship, uni­for­mi­ty,” he added.

Grif­fith said the ini­tia­tives em­ployed by the TTPS were al­ready bear­ing fruit.

“There has been a 25 per cent de­crease in every se­ri­ous crime in T&T from mur­ders, vi­o­lent crimes, rape, in­cest rob­bery and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence,” he said.

He not­ed that more peo­ple had faith in the TTPS.

De­spite the achieve­ments, Grif­fith said they still had a lot to do. He said the sur­veil­lance cam­eras which were not work­ing fell un­der the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but not­ed that Min­is­ter Stu­art Young had giv­en a com­mit­ment to re­pair those which were out of ser­vice.

MP Man­ning com­mend­ed Grif­fith for the achieve­ments and said that he want­ed more op­por­tu­ni­ties to be made avail­able for the youth. He said Tar­o­dale had the most num­ber of young peo­ple than in any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty in the con­stituen­cy.

De­shawn Daniel, 23, who lives in Tar­o­dale com­plained that the area was stig­ma­tized for crime. He said there was the pres­ence of crim­i­nals in the area and he want­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for the youth in the area.

“There are lots of young per­sons un­em­ployed who are not find­ing some­thing to do and we have crim­i­nal pres­ence bran­dish­ing jew­ellery and all sorts of nice things. It is easy for these young peo­ple to go to these neg­a­tive el­e­ments,” Daniel said.

An­oth­er busi­ness­man who was robbed last year com­plained that the po­lice failed to make ar­rests even though he was able to show the of­fi­cers the ex­act lo­ca­tion of the rob­bers as they fled the scene. He said on an­oth­er oc­ca­sion some­one hit his ve­hi­cle on the high­way and al­though a li­cense plate num­ber was giv­en, the po­lice could give no in­for­ma­tion to him about the dri­ver.

ACP for South-Cen­tral Floris Hodge-Grif­fith said the po­lice de­mands were many. 

“We have evolved in­to a sit­u­a­tion where we al­ways do­ing are do­ing so much. We are in so much de­mand, we have to be om­nipresent,” she said.

An­tho­ny Clarke, a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive of San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy called for a po­lice youth group to be formed in the area. He said there were al­so pro­grammes which the T&T Reg­i­ment could of­fer to help dis­ad­van­taged youths.


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