Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is get­ting more man­pow­er.

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved the ab­sorp­tion of over 800 Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) in­to the TTPS—and a num­ber of per­sons are be­ing in­ter­viewed re­gard­ing the school safe­ty of­fi­cer sys­tem.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der an­nounced this at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

“At this time, the Gov­ern­ment is look­ing at all op­tions avail­able for the pro­tec­tion of our cit­i­zens,” he said.

Alexan­der al­so hint­ed at an an­ti-crime plan to come which “in­volves the chang­ing of a lot of things.”

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil is un­der­stood to have met yes­ter­day. This, fol­low­ing a surge in mur­ders and oth­er crimes re­cent­ly.

On the ab­sorp­tion of the SRPs, Alexan­der said there was a waiv­er of the manda­to­ry aca­d­e­m­ic as­pect as re­quired for en­try in­to the TTPS, to fa­cil­i­tate the short­fall of over 1,154 va­can­cies that present­ly ex­ist in the ser­vice.

He said the SRP of­fi­cers are al­ready on the job per­form­ing du­ties all over T&T.

On whether SRPs would be qual­i­fied with the waiv­er of the aca­d­e­m­ic as­pects, he re­it­er­at­ed that they are al­ready tak­ing re­ports and go­ing to courts now. Alexan­der said the reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing the ab­sorp­tion will come some­time af­ter. He not­ed that an ab­sorp­tion was done in 2008 al­so un­der the Patrick Man­ning Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Alexan­der said ba­sic re­cruit­ment of 2,500 of­fi­cers is tar­get­ed an­nu­al­ly but per­sons in the TTPS re­sign or re­tire at the rate of 200 an­nu­al­ly.

“So, the ser­vice al­ways seems to be at a dis­ad­van­tage, so we’re try­ing to bridge that gap be­tween per­sons leav­ing and per­sons en­ter­ing to pro­vide pres­ence and vis­i­bil­i­ty,” Alexan­der said.

“The Com­mis­sion­er spoke to me ear­li­er to­day and he’s look­ing at a slow but pos­i­tive im­pact by re­mov­ing peo­ple from the of­fice and putting po­lice of­fi­cers where they’re sup­posed to be—back on T&T’s streets.”

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, who al­so said an ab­sorp­tion was done in 2008 with 1000 SRPs in­to the po­lice ser­vice, deemed the UNC’s ab­sorp­tion de­ci­sion “a land­mark an­nounce­ment.” He said the UNC, while in Op­po­si­tion, had raised the is­sue of ab­sorp­tion of SRPs as those of­fi­cers had called for it for many years. He said they were treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly on terms and con­di­tions, es­pe­cial­ly con­cern­ing re­mu­ner­a­tion.

Ho­sein said the UNC had promised to ab­sorb them in­to TTPS as reg­u­lar of­fi­cers.

“We’ve kept that promise and this will ad­dress the man­pow­er short­age we have in the TTPS,” Ho­sein said.

Alexan­der said cur­rent­ly, a num­ber of per­sons are al­so be­ing in­ter­viewed with re­spect to se­cu­ri­ty for schools and the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren. He said moves to have school safe­ty of­fi­cers is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

“We’ll pro­vide a name that could cause a pos­i­tive im­pact for so­ci­ety, the chil­dren and prin­ci­pals of schools and law en­force­ments,” he said.

“This is a new ini­tia­tive. We’re look­ing to have law en­force­ment of­fi­cers who will be pre­cept­ed, so in case some­thing hap­pens, they’ll be able to treat with it in the best way. If peo­ple vi­o­late the law, then they’ll be dealt with there and then.”

He said the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er will de­ter­mine which schools will have po­lice of­fi­cers when school re­opens and the num­ber of of­fi­cers for male or fe­male schools. This will be to­geth­er with the re­quest/re­quire­ment by any school for this.

Alexan­der, who said as a min­is­ter he had to be care­ful in his ap­proach to en­sure non-in­ter­fer­ence with probes, added that his job was to give the TTPS the tools to do the job.

For those call­ing for a “crime plan,” he said, “Just al­low things to hap­pen, I mean you’re go­ing to say—yes per­sons are dy­ing and all of these things, but we too as cit­i­zens has (sic) a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

He warned fe­males to be care­ful of their so­cial me­dia net­works in terms of dat­ing be­hav­iour.

Alexan­der al­so cit­ed more leg­is­la­tion to come, in­clud­ing the DNA leg­is­la­tion. On an in­crease in kid­nap­pings, Alexan­der said some things had been not­ed and “cer­tain pat­terns” were ob­served.

On how soon the pop­u­la­tion will start see­ing re­sults, Alexan­der said when the UNC en­tered of­fice, there were a num­ber of sit­u­a­tions that ex­ist­ed. He said things took time.

Ho­sein, who cit­ed achieve­ments in the Gov­ern­ment’s two months —ap­point­ment of a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, draft­ing stand-your-ground law and SRP ab­sorp­tions, promised, “And we have more to come ...”