An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin was ap­point­ed to act as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice from yes­ter­day un­til Wednes­day, while Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro leads a Trinidad and To­ba­go del­e­ga­tion at the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Po­lice (IACP) An­nu­al Con­fer­ence and Ex­po­si­tion in Or­lan­do, Flori­da.

De­scribed as the largest law en­force­ment gath­er­ing in the world, the con­fer­ence brings to­geth­er more than 16,000 pub­lic safe­ty pro­fes­sion­als from over 100 coun­tries, in­clud­ing po­lice chiefs, com­mis­sion­ers, sher­iffs, se­nior law en­force­ment ex­ec­u­tives, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, se­cu­ri­ty prac­ti­tion­ers, aca­d­e­mics and in­dus­try part­ners.

The four-mem­ber lo­cal del­e­ga­tion in­cludes Gue­var­ro; di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Ali­cia Hen­ry; As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence, Andy Tewarie; and US Em­bassy in T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tives Ran­dell Smith and Kel­ley Whit­son.

The con­fer­ence pro­vides a plat­form for in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment and the ex­change of best prac­tices in mod­ern polic­ing.

Del­e­gates will par­tic­i­pate in train­ing work­shops, strate­gic dis­cus­sions, lead­er­ship fo­rums and net­work­ing en­gage­ments fo­cused on some of the most press­ing chal­lenges fac­ing law en­force­ment agen­cies world­wide.

Key top­ics in­clude transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, vi­o­lent crime re­duc­tion strate­gies, in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing, coun­tert­er­ror­ism, cy­ber­crime in­ves­ti­ga­tions, emerg­ing polic­ing tech­nolo­gies, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, drone ap­pli­ca­tions, com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, of­fi­cer well­ness, lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment, com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, pub­lic safe­ty in­no­va­tion and crime pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives.

In a re­lease is­sued through the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, Gue­var­ro said T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion pre­sent­ed an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try’s law en­force­ment and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to strength­en re­la­tion­ships with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, ex­plore in­no­v­a­tive polic­ing strate­gies, and iden­ti­fy emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and prac­tices that could en­hance na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic safe­ty.

The lo­cal del­e­ga­tion’s par­tic­i­pa­tion was spon­sored by the US Em­bassy in T&T.

Gue­var­ro wel­comed the spon­sor­ship, de­scrib­ing it as an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion of the shared com­mit­ment of both coun­tries to com­bat­ing transna­tion­al crime, en­hanc­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty and pro­mot­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties through col­lab­o­ra­tion, train­ing and the ex­change of ex­per­tise.