Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (DCP) Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin has re­in­forced the state­ment that all po­lice fa­cil­i­ties are open on a 24-hour ba­sis.

He gave the as­sur­ance yes­ter­day as he de­fend­ed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in the wake of a state­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Mon­day that some po­lice of­fi­cers were lock­ing them­selves in sta­tions at night be­cause they were fear­ful of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

Pressed for fur­ther de­tails on whether he was aware of such trends hap­pen­ing at po­lice sta­tions or po­lice posts dur­ing a TTPS me­dia brief­ing, Ben­jamin said, “That should not be a prob­lem. It should be a prob­lem of the past. I have in­formed all my se­nior of­fi­cers and com­man­ders that we are on height­ened alert and it came down from the com­mis­sion­er that all sta­tions will be open from now on.”

Dur­ing his open­ing ad­dress at the be­gin­ning of a mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) in the Low­er House on Mon­day, Dr Row­ley claimed he was aware of in­ci­dents where po­lice of­fi­cers in some ar­eas were so afraid of crim­i­nals that they turned off the lights and closed their doors to avoid con­fronting them.

On Tues­day af­ter­noon, how­ev­er, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, in a me­dia re­lease, al­so de­nied the PM’s claims, not­ing that the doors of all po­lice fa­cil­i­ties were al­ways open, as she reaf­firmed her trust in the abil­i­ty of her of­fi­cers.

Ben­jamin al­so yes­ter­day main­tained that of­fi­cers are still pre­pared and will­ing to serve the pub­lic de­spite the Prime Min­is­ter’s claims. Asked specif­i­cal­ly about Row­ley’s state­ments, he re­ferred to Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s state­ment, main­tain­ing that she “spoke on be­half” of the en­tire po­lice ser­vice.

On the is­sue of where sta­tions are built, he said while the fa­cil­i­ties and in­fra­struc­ture are ex­pect­ed to con­form to Op­er­a­tional Safe­ty and Health (OSH) stan­dards, the lo­ca­tion of po­lice sta­tions, in terms of what kinds of risks they may face in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties, is not giv­en spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

“When we talk about risk as­sess­ments, we do it on in­di­vid­u­als not on lo­ca­tions or build­ings. We con­stant­ly look at our build­ings in terms of safe­ty as­sess­ments but in terms of threats, we do that on the ba­sis of an in­di­vid­ual and we make those de­ci­sions on the ba­sis of rec­om­men­da­tions made to us.”

On De­cem­ber 28, 2024, Trevor Williams, an ac­quain­tance of an un­der­world fig­ure, was shot dead by gun­men mere feet away from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion in east Port-of-Spain.

Ben­jamin said po­lice sta­tions like Besson Street were lo­cat­ed to suit the pub­lic, adding that per­sons around the sta­tion were the ones as­sessed on the ba­sis of a threat.