Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice of­fi­cers lined up out­side the Po­lice Stores De­part­ment along Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day to re­turn their tac­ti­cal uni­forms in ex­change for the grey shirt and blue pants.

Of­fi­cers were seen with their tac­ti­cal wear packed in garbage bags, gro­cery bags and duf­fel bags as they stood in the sun from as ear­ly as 8 am to re­turn their kits in keep­ing with the or­der from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher. The man­date, which was an­nounced last Thurs­day, took ef­fect last Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing to DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin, the man­date was in re­sponse to a rise in crim­i­nals pos­ing as po­lice of­fi­cers in tac­ti­cal wear, which is eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

All po­lice of­fi­cers ex­cept for those as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, In­ter-Agency Task Force, Na­tion­al Op­er­at­ing Task Force and the Mul­ti-Op­er­a­tional Po­lice Sec­tion have un­til to­mor­row, Wednes­day to re­turn their op­er­a­tional wear.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the process by vis­it­ing the Stores De­part­ment and hoped to speak with the se­nior of­fi­cer in charge Cpl Thomas. How­ev­er, he said he was not au­tho­rised to speak and ad­vised that the TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment be con­tact­ed.

But the com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit said in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the num­ber of uni­forms re­turned and the num­ber still out­stand­ing was not pru­dent to di­vulge.

In­side the de­part­ment, of­fi­cers in groups of five were seen with their old uni­forms in hand, sign­ing a yel­low book and re­ceiv­ing their new uni­forms.

Out­side, as po­lice of­fi­cers com­plied with the or­der and wait­ed their turn in line to re­turn the tac­ti­cal wear, some com­plained bit­ter­ly that the idea was not well thought out.

Of­fi­cers, who said they were as­signed to di­vi­sion­al task forces, said they must now go on moun­tain­ous ter­rain in shoes rather than boots. They said re­turn­ing to the grey and blue was not user-friend­ly as there was no way to store the ex­tra mag­a­zines they usu­al­ly car­ry along with oth­er items.

Oth­er of­fi­cers said the is­sue should have been cor­rect­ed us­ing tech­nol­o­gy with tac­ti­cal uni­forms be­ing out­fit­ted with ra­dio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (RFID).

Dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing last Thurs­day, DCP Ben­jamin said of­fi­cers in tac­ti­cal wear will be ac­com­pa­nied by of­fi­cers in dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage or the reg­u­lar grey shirt and blue pants, as a mea­sure to as­sure the pub­lic of their le­git­i­ma­cy. The of­fi­cers will al­so be dis­play­ing their badges and Ben­jamin ad­vised that if cit­i­zens were un­easy, they should call the near­est po­lice sta­tion.

The day af­ter the or­der was made the TTPS’ So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion said the de­vel­op­ment was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the in­tro­duc­tion of an er­gonom­ic and con­tem­po­rary uni­form that is cli­mate-friend­ly.

In a me­dia re­lease, the as­so­ci­a­tion said while it ac­knowl­edges the con­cern of fake po­lice and the meth­ods to ad­dress it, it was ad­vo­cat­ing for all di­vi­sion­al task forces to be al­lowed to wear dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage uni­forms.