All bmo­bile cus­tomers now have free ac­cess to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) App, and can re­port an is­sue or crime and even use the SOS Alert sys­tem, with­out hav­ing a da­ta plan or even cred­it on their ac­count.

This is a re­sult of bmo­bile now al­low­ing ze­ro-rat­ed da­ta ac­cess to the TTPS App, a move which Gen­er­al Man­ag­er En­ter­prise Ser­vices (Ag.) at TSTT, Dar­ryl Duke, says is part of TSTT’s con­tin­ued strate­gic al­liance with the TTPS in the fight against crime.

“This part­ner­ship re­in­forces the com­pa­ny’s sup­port of na­tion­wide ini­tia­tives which can have a pos­i­tive im­pact on our na­tion’s safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, by em­ploy­ing the ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient use of tech­nol­o­gy, like we did with bmo­bile Vig­i­lance,” Duke not­ed.

“This ini­tia­tive now re­alis­es 100 per­cent ze­ro-rat­ed ac­cess (free us­age) for any bmo­bile cus­tomer in this coun­try with a smart­phone who can in­stall and use the App,” he ex­plained.  “We ex­pect to see a sig­nif­i­cant up­take in down­loads and us­age of the App, and this will sup­port the TTPS and our cit­i­zens, as we strive to be our broth­er’s keep­er.”

Dar­ryl Duke en­cour­ages users to vis­it their de­vice’s app stores to find and down­load the TTPS App and keep it vis­i­ble for their use as need­ed.

“We can all do our part to tack­le the scourge of crime,” he points out.

“We are proud of this al­liance be­tween our­selves, pri­vate en­ter­prise, and the TTPS, to bring this fan­tas­tic ini­tia­tive to fruition,” Duke added.

The TTPS App is a Law En­force­ment and Pub­lic Safe­ty Tech­nol­o­gy that al­lows the TTPS to bet­ter con­nect with the pub­lic and of­fer per­son­al safe­ty ser­vices through a mo­bile smart­phone. The App was de­vel­oped by Shaare Tech­nolo­gies.

Through the App, the TTPS keeps the pub­lic in­formed about its na­tion­wide polic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, and the pub­lic can re­port crimes to the TTPS with sup­port­ing pho­tos and videos. Al­so, the App’s SOS fea­ture al­lows users to alert the po­lice of their iden­ti­ty and ex­act lo­ca­tion when their life is in im­mi­nent dan­ger.  Users of the App must en­sure that they have Lo­ca­tion ser­vices turned on for their de­vice so they can ac­cess cer­tain of the App’s ser­vices such as the Emer­gency SOS fea­ture.

The TTPS re­ports that the App cur­rent­ly has over 30,000 ac­tive users. Al­so, there have been more than 15,000 crime re­ports, rang­ing from child abuse to do­mes­tic abuse, as well as re­ports con­cern­ing drugs, guns, and am­mu­ni­tion, among oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Head of the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit for the TTPS, Fran­cis Joseph, wel­comed the free ac­cess now avail­able to bmo­bile cus­tomers.

“There were many per­sons in our so­ci­ety who found them­selves in need of ac­cess­ing the App but just at that time, did not have da­ta on their de­vice. This will now help to bring more crimes in­to the light so that we can re­spond and as­sist as need­ed or do our in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” he point­ed out.

Joseph al­so ex­plained that once the Emer­gency SOS on the App is trig­gered, it alerts the Op­er­a­tional Com­mand Cen­tre, send­ing the mes­sage out to emer­gency re­sponse units on pa­trol 24 hours a day.

“So far, we have had good suc­cess­es with re­sponse times de­pend­ing on the lo­ca­tion, which has al­lowed us to in­ter­vene and ap­pre­hend sus­pects,” he not­ed.

“Just this week, a cit­i­zen us­ing the App al­lowed us to in­ter­vene in a crime in progress,” he added.

Joseph stat­ed that ‘free’ ac­cess to the App had been the most re­quest­ed fea­ture since its launch.

“Thanks to bmo­bile’s gift of free da­ta for the use of the TTPS App, crime re­port­ing and Emer­gency SOS are now avail­able to the pub­lic from any mo­bile smart­phone at any time,” he said.

The TTPS App can be down­loaded eas­i­ly from the Google Play Stores and Ap­ple iOS Stores (or from the TTPS web­site) and is free to down­load and in­stall. Cus­tomers can use the App anony­mous­ly with­out ac­ti­vat­ing lo­ca­tion ser­vices, but the lo­ca­tion will be need­ed if a re­port is made, or the Emer­gency fea­ture is used.

Users al­so can be as­sured that their lo­ca­tions can­not be tracked oth­er­wise—and will on­ly be ac­tive for the SOS fea­ture or if a for­mal po­lice re­port is made. In ad­di­tion, on­ly des­ig­nat­ed mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice can ac­cess re­ports made by the pub­lic to en­sure con­fi­den­tial­i­ty as they are at lo­cal po­lice sta­tions.

For more in­for­ma­tion on the TTPS app, vis­it www.ttps.gov.tt/About/TTPS-App.