Se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments are in place for next week’s In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions and ex­ten­sive mea­sures have been tak­en to as­sure the safe­ty of all who will be present, in­clud­ing Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, who will be in T&T from Au­gust 28-Sep­tem­ber 1.

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Wen­dell Williams, who has been ap­point­ed as the Gold Com­man­der in charge of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for the 60th in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, yes­ter­day said over 800 po­lice of­fi­cers will be utilised in the se­cu­ri­ty frame­work.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Williams ad­vised ex­cit­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic, who will be al­lowed to phys­i­cal­ly at­tend the event af­ter a two-year hia­tus due to COVID-19, that a spe­cial fea­ture will see of­fi­cers don­ning uni­forms worn in the past.

With the of­fi­cial pro­ceed­ings sched­uled to be­gin at 7.30 am at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Williams said, “The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has made a lim­it­ed num­ber of seats avail­able to mem­bers of the pub­lic who want to ap­ply for an in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the Grand Stand.”

Mean­while, the street pa­rade from the QPS to the Po­lice Bar­racks in St James is set to be­gin around 9 am, whilst the toast to the na­tion will take place at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) at 10 am.

Per­sons want­i­ng to se­cure an in­vi­ta­tion to the Grand Stand must sub­mit their re­quest to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Williams has warned that this is not an au­to­mat­ic en­try in­to NA­PA, as on­ly spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed dig­ni­taries will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed.

Bleach­ers will al­so be erect­ed on the west­ern side of the QPS in front of the pa­rade square for the pub­lic.

There will be two en­try points in­to and out of the QPS, which will be ac­ces­si­ble from 5 am to 11 am.

For those at­tend­ing ei­ther venue, the safe­ty checks and se­cu­ri­ty search­es will re­main the same.

And for those who are hold­ers of a Firearm Users Li­cense (FUL), Williams said, “They will be re­quired to lodge same as civil­ians be­cause we don’t want an in­ci­dent oc­cur­ring and the armed forces, if it oc­curs, have the prob­lem of iden­ti­fy­ing who are au­tho­rised or not.”

Firearms can be lodged with a team of of­fi­cers at a spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed booth and will be re­turned to the own­ers when the event is over.

Re­it­er­at­ing that Port-of-Spain re­mained a no-fly zone, Williams stressed, “Per­sons need to know that they will not be per­mit­ted to fly drones in Port-of-Spain, ex­cept if they are ex­empt­ed.”

No vend­ing will be al­lowed with­in the precincts of NA­PA and Williams said no in­di­vid­ual or group has been giv­en per­mis­sion to protest, march or meet on that day.

If any­one shows up to do so, he said the au­thor­i­ties will re­act quick­ly.

“We will ap­proach that as a threat to our se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments,” he said.

He al­so urged mo­torists to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to the no­tices, as no park­ing will be al­lowed along the des­ig­nat­ed route and wreck­ers will be work­ing on that day.

To the pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly those along the pa­rade route, he urged, “If you see some­thing that is sus­pi­cious, some­thing with­in that space, any­thing at all, you re­port it to the of­fi­cers in those quad­rants or sec­tors.”

He said each team of of­fi­cers will have sup­port teams they can call in to ren­der tac­ti­cal sup­port for any­thing that is re­quired in­side the main se­cu­ri­ty area.