An­na-Lisa Paul

Even as he wel­comed the lat­est batch of 110 po­lice of­fi­cers in­to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds warned, “You are en­ter­ing the are­na of polic­ing in a very vi­o­lent so­ci­ety.”

De­liv­er­ing re­marks at the Pass­ing Out Pa­rade of Batch Two of 2021 at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James, Hinds con­tin­ued, “The vi­o­lent ex­trem­ists and crim­i­nal el­e­ments have vir­tu­al­ly de­clared war against peace and good or­der in our so­ci­ety.”

Of­fer­ing some som­bre ad­vice to the newest group of of­fi­cers, he said, “You will be test­ed se­vere­ly in many ways. ... Adorn your­self there­fore with courage and fear­less­ness and dis­ci­pline to push that, and them, back.”

Hinds re­mind­ed the grad­u­ates that while they will be func­tion­ing where wicked­ness, self­ish­ness, mur­der and all oth­er man­ners of evil may pre­vail, they will stand for the law.

“You stand for what is right. You stand for jus­tice,” he said.

Hinds said he was proud of the work be­ing per­formed by of­fi­cers in all sec­tions and di­vi­sions, boast­ing that all firearms in cas­es for 2022 have so far been analysed and en­tered in­to the sys­tem, which has al­lowed of­fi­cers to ac­quire in­for­ma­tion in a more time­ly man­ner. He re­mind­ed the of­fi­cers that they will be held to very high moral and eth­i­cal stan­dards and will al­so be ac­count­able to the laws of T&T.

Against the back­drop of the coun­try’s spi­ralling mur­der toll, Hinds said, “We live in a very vi­o­lent and cor­rupt so­ci­ety where guns are made eas­i­ly avail­able, to what I de­scribe as ig­no­rant or reprisal killings and re­venge.

“Sad­ly, we in T&T are fac­ing the prospect of short­ly ar­riv­ing at 500 mur­ders in this won­der­ful and won­der­ful­ly blessed land. Some em­a­nat­ing from do­mes­tic cir­cum­stances, some out of pet­ty in­stances, some out of re­tal­i­a­tion, and many, if not most, are gang-re­lat­ed. And with ac­cess to au­to­mat­ic weapons, there is now dou­ble, triple and even quadru­ple mur­ders in sin­gle events. So these in­vest­ments and re­cruits like you are need­ed.”

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, mean­while, said the lat­est batch of re­cruits had en­tered the TTPS at a crit­i­cal junc­ture.

“We con­tin­ue to have in T&T, a high in­ci­dence of or­gan­ised crime and vi­o­lence and un­want­ed gang ac­tiv­i­ties in our streets and in our com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Re­fer­ring to the re­cruits as “pa­trollers” who will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the crime sit­u­a­tion, he ac­knowl­edged, “I am not say­ing at all that pa­trols alone will do it. I am say­ing that pa­trols will be a key fac­tor in go­ing for­ward in deal­ing with the crime sit­u­a­tion.”

As their loved ones looked out on the pa­rade ground from the safe­ty of the nu­mer­ous bal­conies, Ja­cob told the uni­formed men and women, “Your very pres­ence here to­day ac­tu­al­ly speaks to the TTPS for strate­gic plan­ning, which is reaf­firm­ing our shared fo­cus and val­ues in an era of ex­po­nen­tial change. Your first task will be on the ground as a pa­troller.”

Point­ing out that this as­pect of polic­ing had di­min­ished over the last two years as the coun­try and world nav­i­gat­ed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Ja­cob said while many of­fi­cers had drift­ed away from it, pa­trolling re­mained the back­bone, foun­da­tion and nu­cle­us of the TTPS. He said as more fo­cus was placed on this as­pect of polic­ing over the last three months, ad­di­tion­al mo­bile and foot pa­trols had led to in­creas­es in seizures, with 88 of­fi­cers re­ceiv­ing com­men­da­tions and fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives for their ef­forts.

Ja­cob not­ed, how­ev­er, that of­fi­cers in the ser­vice to­day want to be every­thing else ex­cept a pa­trol of­fi­cer. But he re­mind­ed them that they had been tasked with an im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“The pop­u­la­tion is look­ing to us to re­turn our beloved coun­try to a sense of nor­mal­cy and a state of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.