WPC Na­tal­ie Blake be­came the first fe­male in­struc­tor at the Mount­ed and Ca­nine Branch. She was de­scribed as an ex­cel­lent mount­ed of­fi­cer. WPC Blake says that she was ho­n­oured to be­come the first fe­male in­struc­tor at the branch. De­tails fol­low in this re­lease.

WPC Na­tal­ie Blake, or ‘Ama­zon’ as her col­leagues have come to call her, be­came the first fe­male in­struc­tor at the Mount­ed and Ca­nine Branch just two months ago. Be­com­ing an in­struc­tor was not on her list of goals but her pas­sion for an­i­mals and her love of horse rid­ing helped her to feel at home. De­ter­mined that so­ci­ety shouldn’t de­fine her based on her gen­der, she fought with vigour to stand proud­ly along­side her male coun­ter­parts.

Orig­i­nal­ly from San Juan, she at­tend­ed San Juan Sec­ondary School where her first ca­reer choice was draughts­man­ship. The pas­sion for polic­ing came a bit lat­er with her fas­ci­na­tion in var­i­ous re­al crime do­cuseries. En­cour­aged by her now de­ceased fa­ther, she joined what is con­sid­ered a male-dom­i­nat­ed job. She start­ed her ca­reer in polic­ing in 2003 as a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice and was lat­er ab­sorbed in­to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in 2009.

WPC Blake’s first post­ing was at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion and has since worked in var­i­ous units such as, Com­mu­ni­ty and Crime Pre­ven­tion, Di­vi­sion­al Task Forces, Court and Process, and Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion, be­fore ap­ply­ing and go­ing to the Mount­ed and Ca­nine Branch in 2017, where she be­came the first fe­male top trainee.

Her se­niors re­fer to her as an ex­cel­lent mount­ed of­fi­cer and rec­om­mend­ed her to be­come an in­struc­tor based on her ap­ti­tude and work eth­ic. She grap­pled with the de­ci­sion but was en­cour­aged by her col­leagues and se­niors to do so and af­ter weigh­ing the op­tions she went for it. Al­though train­ing was tough due to dis­tance and sit­u­a­tion­al fac­tors, her hus­band and three chil­dren were her biggest sup­port­ers, as they kept her fo­cused through all the chal­lenges. “There’s a lev­el of pride when my chil­dren ask to come to work with me, or some fam­i­ly mem­bers ask­ing to vis­it my job and take pic­tures with me.”

“I am ho­n­oured to be the first fe­male in­struc­tor at the Branch as I am al­so the first fe­male to suc­cess­ful­ly train a new horse that was ac­quired by the Branch last year. My in­ten­tion is to be an ex­em­plar to not on­ly up­com­ing fe­male of­fi­cers, but every young fe­male in so­ci­ety. Don’t let oth­ers’ per­cep­tion of you de­fine what you do, you’re more than what peo­ple say you are and if you have a pas­sion fol­low it.”

She al­so de­bunked the myths that of­fi­cers don’t work at the Mount­ed and Ca­nine Branch. She ex­plained that the Branch is heav­i­ly in­volved in Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing, which plays a ma­jor role in the fight against crime. The of­fi­cers al­so do reg­u­lar pa­trols through var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with cer­e­mo­ni­al es­cort and ho­n­our guard du­ties. She stat­ed that be­ing at the Branch is phys­i­cal­ly dom­i­nat­ing so her ad­vice for any­one wish­ing to join is to be pre­pared to work hard.

WPC Blake could not say what her fu­ture in­ten­tions are, but promised to con­tin­ue to ex­cel at the Mount­ed and Ca­nine Branch.