Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Amidst con­cerns about ban­dits pos­ing as po­lice of­fi­cers to gain ac­cess to homes, po­lice in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion are urg­ing res­i­dents to ask for of­fi­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion be­fore al­low­ing strangers in­to their homes.

The warn­ing comes one week af­ter a home in­va­sion where ban­dits dressed in po­lice uni­form stormed a house on Ra­goo­nanan Road, Cunu­pia.

The is­sue was raised dur­ing a po­lice town hall meet­ing at the Cunu­pia Sec­ondary School, Has­sarath Lane, on Tues­day night by a res­i­dent who said these and oth­er in­ci­dents in­volv­ing ban­dits dressed as po­lice was un­set­tling.

“This is some­thing that needs to be ad­dressed be­cause if you are sleep­ing in the night and you see po­lice of­fi­cers and they come to your home, how will you be able to re­spond to that sit­u­a­tion?”

In his re­sponse, In­sp In­shan Teeluck sug­gest­ed that res­i­dents ask to see the of­fi­cial TTPS iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card or their badge be­fore al­low­ing peo­ple claim­ing to be po­lice in their homes.

Teeluck al­so ap­pealed to res­i­dents to be ob­ser­vant of cer­tain de­tails when as­sess­ing whether they were be­ing ap­proached by le­git­i­mate po­lice of­fi­cers.

“Most of the po­lice of­fi­cers have this badge now, it is some­thing they can­not du­pli­cate and if they can­not pro­duce it, do not en­gage them.

“Many times the il­le­git­i­mate po­lice will come in un­marked ve­hi­cles.

“In Cunu­pia dis­tricts, the uni­formed po­lice of­fi­cers have marked po­lice ve­hi­cles and you know what a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle looks like so that is one way to ver­i­fy who is re­al and who isn’t.”

Teeluck said res­i­dents should al­so call the near­est po­lice sta­tion to ver­i­fy whether the of­fi­cers were le­git­i­mate.

Al­so re­spond­ing to the con­cerns was act­ing In­sp Syl­van Stew­art who not­ed that res­i­dents ask for of­fi­cial po­lice iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“The is­sue was posed to the cur­rent com­mis­sion­er, some of the is­sues she raised was that un­like the De­fence Force we don’t have that sort of pro­tec­tion where cam­ou­flage uni­form is il­le­gal.

“That is not the cir­cum­stance right now and I be­lieve it is be­ing ad­dressed.”

One res­i­dent not­ed that in their haste, some po­lice of­fi­cers may not show their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or sim­ply refuse when asked by civil­ians.

Re­fer­ring to a sit­u­a­tion where po­lice of­fi­cers en­tered her prop­er­ty dur­ing a search and failed to pro­duce iden­ti­fi­ca­tion when asked, the res­i­dent asked what could be done.

“Some of them are re­al of­fi­cers and are not show­ing their badge or ID but giv­ing you an at­ti­tude to go with it.”

In re­sponse, Supt Miguel Mon­trichard ad­vised that in such a sit­u­a­tion, the best re­sponse may be to com­ply.