If you were in and around Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, then you would’ve seen close to one hun­dred po­lice of­fi­cers on pa­trol.

Ac­cord­ing to As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Di­vi­sion, Suresh Sagram­s­ingh, the of­fi­cers are ramp­ing up their foot pa­trols in the lead-up to Christ­mas as shop­pers are out in their num­bers. It’s an ex­er­cise that start­ed on No­vem­ber 24.

“Plan­ning crime strate­gies is de­pen­dent on da­ta and based on that da­ta we ac­tu­al­ly make a de­ci­sion to op­ti­mise our hu­man re­sources and oth­er phys­i­cal re­sources and that is what we are do­ing here now,” Sagram­s­ingh stat­ed.

He added, “We re­alise that it is im­por­tant in this time to come out with the re­lax­ation of COVID re­stric­tions where there will be a lot more peo­ple com­ing out in­to the Port-of-Spain area and the oth­er cities so, this ini­tia­tive is to re­al­ly let the of­fend­ers know that the pres­ence of the po­lice would be there so that they could de­ter any crim­i­nal con­duct.”

The aim is not to make ar­rests, he said, but to pre­vent crimes from oc­cur­ring.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the TTPS Court and Process Branch, Anand Rame­sar, urged cit­i­zens to co­op­er­ate with the of­fi­cers, not­ing that they have been deal­ing with a lot since the start of the pan­dem­ic. This, as he re­vealed an­oth­er of­fi­cer died from COVID-19 on Wednes­day morn­ing. This is the sec­ond of­fi­cer from his unit that has suc­cumbed to the dis­ease this month he said.

“So our of­fi­cers are men­tal­ly af­fect­ed by it, notwith­stand­ing they have been able to come out here and car­ry out their func­tions. I want to re­spect that and sup­port that and con­grat­u­late them in that re­gard,” Snr Supt Rame­sar stat­ed.

Asked about the vac­ci­na­tion rate with­in the TTPS, Rame­sar said there has been an in­crease.

Yes­ter­day’s ex­er­cise in­clud­ed a mix­ture of of­fi­cers from both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Di­vi­sion.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent, Wayne Mo­hammed, said of­fi­cers have no­ticed an im­prove­ment in cit­i­zens’ ad­her­ence to the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions. Ac­cord­ing to him, on­ly one tick­et had been is­sued up to noon yes­ter­day for not wear­ing a face mask. The oth­er tick­ets is­sued were for park­ing of­fences.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Spe­cial Sup­port, Nazrudeen Praag, urged cit­i­zens to not be a “soft tar­get.”

“Don’t let your be­long­ings be vis­i­ble to crim­i­nals and se­cure your phones and your wal­let. Just make your­self a hard tar­get and al­ways be in com­pa­ny with oth­er per­sons so that you’ll be safe at all times,” Praag sug­gest­ed.

The aim, ACP Praag said, is to make this Christ­mas sea­son the safest the coun­try has ever ex­pe­ri­enced.