Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der com­mend­ed the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Po­lice Ser­vice for its suc­cess in re­duc­ing mur­ders and curb­ing il­le­gal drugs and weapons. Speak­ing dur­ing a vis­it to the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion to­day, Alexan­der de­scribed the 300 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders as a “mile­stone,” not­ing that the is­land record­ed sev­en mur­ders this year com­pared to 24 last year.

He cred­it­ed the achieve­ment to strong lead­er­ship and mo­ti­vat­ed of­fi­cers. “It’s all about lead­er­ship, en­cour­ag­ing of­fi­cers to go be­yond the call of du­ty. The suc­cess be­longs to those forces, not me,” he said.

He added that the is­land’s of­fi­cers had al­so been help­ing to sup­press il­le­gal drugs and weapons, say­ing, “If you are suf­fer­ing from hu­man traf­fick­ing, drugs, and guns en­ter­ing your coun­try, and some­body saw it fit to pro­vide some lev­el of pro­tec­tion at sea to pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing, would you not en­joy that? The price of mar­i­jua­na went up. The price of co­caine went up. Some­thing is hap­pen­ing pos­i­tive in and around Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Alexan­der, who ac­com­pa­nied Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the vis­it, said the gov­ern­ment is as­sess­ing the is­land’s se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing po­lice sta­tions, ve­hi­cles, and oth­er re­sources, to im­prove sup­port for of­fi­cers.

He ac­knowl­edged on­go­ing chal­lenges with re­sources but said these stemmed from pre­vi­ous de­lays. “You can­not pur­chase some­thing the day for the day, es­pe­cial­ly in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Pro­cure­ment takes time, but I in­tend to fix it,” he said.

Alexan­der al­so said dis­cus­sions are un­der­way about up­grad­ing the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion to bet­ter meet the is­land’s grow­ing pop­u­la­tion and polic­ing needs.

He added that To­ba­go’s ex­am­ple could serve as a mod­el for oth­er di­vi­sions. “Some­thing is hap­pen­ing here that needs to be tak­en to Trinidad. Peo­ple should be ask­ing why To­ba­go’s of­fi­cers are per­form­ing at this lev­el,” he said.

The min­is­ter is al­so sched­uled to vis­it oth­er se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing fire sta­tions, be­fore re­turn­ing to Trinidad.