The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­vealed yes­ter­day that the Dean of the Po­lice Acad­e­my, Nizam Ali, had died from COVID-19.

Ali was 71.

In a state­ment, the TTPS said Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob and the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive had ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues of Dean of Ad­vanced Law En­force­ment, Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing at the Po­lice Acad­e­my.

The state­ment said Ali died at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal overnight (Fri­day), where he was be­ing treat­ed af­ter test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

Ali leaves be­hind his com­mon-law wife Wa­hee­da Sook­lal and two chil­dren.

The TTPS said Ali was em­ployed in the ser­vice in Jan­u­ary 2011 as the Ad­min­is­tra­tor, Re­search and Cur­ricu­lum De­vel­op­ment and held the post for six years, be­fore tak­ing up the po­si­tion of Dean in 2017.

Provost at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, Dr Si­mon Alex­is, said Ali, “ was an ex­cel­lent and con­sis­tent high per­former in his posts.”

Alex­is not­ed that “through his vi­sion and ded­i­ca­tion to the ad­vance­ment of the acad­e­my, we be­came a reg­is­tered in­sti­tu­tion with the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go, mak­ing the Po­lice Acad­e­my the first of its kind in the Caribbean re­gion.” He said there were no words to con­vey “this ter­ri­ble loss of an ed­u­ca­tor to the TTPS and Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The TTPS has been im­pact­ed by COVID-19, with over a dozen of­fi­cers suc­cumb­ing to the dis­ease for the year.