JESSE RAMDEO

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is as­sur­ing that de­spite the surge in mur­ders, mea­sures are be­ing tak­en to re­store a lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty to cit­i­zens es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The pledge comes as the pub­lic con­tin­ues to grap­ple with an uptick in crime and vi­o­lence and lament their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to crim­i­nals.

Dur­ing a drill with var­i­ous arms of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ahead of the Car­ni­val sea­son yes­ter­day at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said the cur­rent blood­shed was not re­lat­ed to the Car­ni­val sea­son and added that mea­sures have been put in place to bol­ster the pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens.

“There is an op­er­a­tional plan for every sin­gle event, so prob­a­bly the safest event to be is at­tend­ing Car­ni­val fetes. So I want the pub­lic to be com­fort­able. No need to be fear­ful, just be care­ful. We are out in full force at every Car­ni­val event.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, said gang­sters were be­hind the up­surge in blood­shed and again point­ed to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of high-pow­ered ri­fles fu­el­ing the mur­ders.

“What you’re see­ing right now is a lot of reprisals with gangs and gang ac­tiv­i­ties, lead­ing to wan­ton shoot­ings at each oth­er and al­so the types of firearms they have is a ma­jor con­cern to us.”

Min­is­ter Young re­it­er­at­ed that one mur­der was one too many and main­tained there were no cor­re­la­tions with the re­cent spate of killings to Car­ni­val. He said all arms of the TTPS were work­ing in tan­dem with each oth­er and ex­plor­ing in­tel­li­gence gath­ered.

He, how­ev­er, stressed the op­po­si­tion’s sup­port on leg­is­la­tion aimed at keep­ing gun of­fend­ers off the street was crit­i­cal to re­duc­ing the blood­shed.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, Ca­nine and Mount­ed Branch Unit took part in a sim­u­la­tion ac­tiv­i­ty as they read­ied them­selves to hit the streets on Car­ni­val which is just days away.

The po­lice com­mis­sion­er warned that of­fi­cers were pre­pared to deal with any sit­u­a­tion how­ev­er as­sured no brute force would be used against the pub­lic.

“Mem­bers of the pub­lic who may have an in­ten­tion to desta­bilise the coun­try and break the law, what you see here is not in­tim­i­da­tion, not a show of force. It is the min­i­mum use of force what we show is if a large amount of peo­ple try­ing to break the law through the drills, this is just stan­dard op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dure,” said Grif­fith.