Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go’s three new se­cu­ri­ty posts in Sig­nal Hill, Good­wood and Ply­mouth are now of­fi­cial­ly op­er­a­tional.

The fa­cil­i­ties were com­mis­sioned by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny in Sig­nal Hill yes­ter­day. Al­so at­tend­ing were Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro ex­pressed con­fi­dence that To­bag­o­ni­ans would soon ex­pe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits of the new fa­cil­i­ties, point­ing to ear­ly suc­cess­es from sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives launched in Trinidad.

“The first three mi­cro-polic­ing units es­tab­lished in Trinidad on Sep­tem­ber 17 at Tarou­ba, Ed­die Hart and Grand Bazaar have, in a short pe­ri­od, con­duct­ed 978 mo­bile pa­trols, 224 foot pa­trols and 70 op­er­a­tions and ex­er­cis­es,” Gue­var­ro said.

“Those ac­tiv­i­ties re­sult­ed in 29 ar­rests and 151 fixed penal­ty no­tices be­ing is­sued. More im­por­tant­ly, they have stood as a bea­con of com­fort to the cit­i­zen­ry.”

Gue­var­ro said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was al­ready see­ing en­cour­ag­ing trends in its crime sta­tis­tics, which he at­trib­uted to stronger com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tion­ships and a sus­tained fo­cus on crime re­duc­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia about the TTPS al­lo­ca­tion for the new fis­cal year, Gue­var­ro said he would make the best use of the re­sources pro­vid­ed. He al­so in­di­cat­ed that the $42 mil­lion re­duc­tion in the 2027 over­time al­lo­ca­tion for month­ly-paid po­lice of­fi­cers, which fell from $500 mil­lion, would not hin­der po­lice op­er­a­tions.

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar was un­able to pro­vide de­tails on the cost of the se­cu­ri­ty posts or the con­trac­tors in­volved. She said the projects were man­aged through UDe­COTT and ad­vised that fur­ther in­for­ma­tion could be ob­tained from the state agency.

Ad­dress­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, De­fence Min­is­ter Sturge said while To­ba­go does not face the same lev­el of crime as Trinidad, crim­i­nal el­e­ments have in­creas­ing­ly been cross­ing over to the is­land.

“They come here and seek to en­tice your young men and women in­to a life of crime, in­volv­ing drugs, guns and be­hav­iour that un­der­mines To­ba­go’s so­cial fab­ric,” Sturge said.

How­ev­er, he praised To­bag­o­ni­ans for their strong val­ues and com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

“I know that To­bag­o­ni­ans are among the most beau­ti­ful peo­ple in the Caribbean, peo­ple who up­hold high moral stan­dards,” he added.

Sturge de­scribed the se­cu­ri­ty posts as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure aimed at main­tain­ing To­ba­go’s safe­ty. He urged res­i­dents to work close­ly with law en­force­ment agen­cies, while stress­ing that po­lice of­fi­cers must earn the trust and con­fi­dence of the pub­lic.

“The sup­port of the peo­ple is in­te­gral to the fight against crime,” he said.