Akash Sama­roo

Act­ing Sergeant Jacey Small, of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), has been award­ed the Top Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Of­fi­cer ti­tle for his work in re­duc­ing crime in Cen­tral Trinidad.

The an­nu­al Re­gion­al Recog­ni­tion Awards start­ed in 2014, recog­nis­es out­stand­ing po­lice of­fi­cers across the Caribbean re­gion and is or­gan­ised by the Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (ASSL) in con­junc­tion with the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (AC­CP).

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ny at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tive Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, ASSL Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Pamela Ho­sein said, “Sergeant Small is pas­sion­ate about part­ner­ing with com­mu­ni­ties to build com­mu­ni­ty re­silience through so­cial crime pre­ven­tion ef­forts ... He, to­geth­er with the TTPS, have won the 2019 IDB Pres­i­dent’s Award for ex­cel­lence in the pub­lic sec­tor based on the col­lab­o­ra­tive mod­el which in­clud­ed all stake­hold­ers work­ing to­geth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the En­ter­prise Com­mu­ni­ty, which has proven to dras­ti­cal­ly re­duce crime with an 87 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders, se­ri­ous crimes and vi­o­lent crimes in 2019.”

Ho­sein said Sergeant Small is al­so the leader of the Ed­in­burgh 500 Young Stars Po­lice Youth Club, who were the win­ners of the first-ever Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Foot­ball Cup.

“Hav­ing brought youth from ri­val gangs to play foot­ball on the same team,” Ho­sein added.

Mean­while, Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob thanked Sergeant Small for paving the way to en­sur­ing that the TTPS an­ti-gang ini­tia­tives have a great plat­form to en­sure suc­cess, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Cen­tral area.

Ja­cob said the area of Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas will al­so be con­sid­ered for the pro­gramme and he asked Sergeant Small to lead that charge.

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing his award, which con­sist­ed of a tro­phy and a mon­e­tary prize, Sergeant Small said the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er’s style of in­spi­ra­tional lead­er­ship had mo­ti­vat­ed him to do the work.

Speak­ing af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Ja­cob said he al­so re­ceived an award from the pro­gramme in 2014 for be­ing the top crime fight­er in the Caribbean.