Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The call by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to lim­it the use of po­lice tac­ti­cal uni­forms on­ly to of­fi­cers as­signed to four spec­i­fied units is re­ceiv­ing mixed re­views from po­lice of­fi­cers.

Of­fi­cers, who spoke un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, say the tac­ti­cal wear is sim­ply more com­fort­able.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin said on­ly of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, In­ter-Agency Task Force, Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force and Mul­ti-Op­er­a­tional Po­lice Sec­tion were now al­lowed to use the tac­ti­cal wear.

The de­ci­sion to halt all oth­er of­fi­cers from don­ning the op­er­a­tional kits is in re­sponse to a rise in crim­i­nals pos­ing as po­lice of­fi­cers to en­gage in kid­nap­pings, ex­tor­tion and mur­ders.

DCP Ben­jamin added that of­fi­cers in tac­ti­cal wear will be ac­com­pa­nied by of­fi­cers in dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage or the reg­u­lar grey shirt and blue pants, as a mea­sure to as­sure the pub­lic of their le­git­i­ma­cy. The of­fi­cers will al­so be dis­play­ing their badges. Ben­jamin ad­vised that if cit­i­zens are un­easy, they should call the near­est po­lice sta­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day via phone, of­fi­cers said the re­call may not have the de­sired ef­fect, as the record-keep­ing at the po­lice’s stores de­part­ment is not the best and is not dig­i­tal. One of­fi­cer added that with the ques­tion­able record keep­ing, al­most half of the 7,000-plus of­fi­cers over the years were once is­sued tac­ti­cal wear.

An­oth­er of­fi­cer said the as­signed grey shirt and blue pants uni­form is not “con­ducive to hu­man be­ings.” He added that the pants seemed to be dress pants at­tire and as such, were not ide­al for pa­trols and chas­ing af­ter crim­i­nals.

“This uni­form was de­signed in the ear­ly 1900s. In this mod­ern day, the right side of the pants have a long pock­et for a ba­ton. So these pants have on­ly one pock­et. Nowa­days, po­lice of­fi­cers have tick­et de­vice, their cell­phones and oth­er de­vices and nowhere to put it. The tac­ti­cal uni­form has the car­go pants and the jack­et has four pock­ets. I ac­tu­al­ly lost a cou­ple of things in the past when they told us we had to go back to the grey uni­form, so the change for me is un­com­fort­able,” the sec­ond of­fi­cer said.

Re­act­ing to the or­der for po­lice of­fi­cers to stop wear­ing the tac­ti­cal uni­forms, the TTPS’ So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion said the de­vel­op­ment is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the in­tro­duc­tion of an er­gonom­ic and con­tem­po­rary uni­form that is cli­mate-friend­ly.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion said while it ac­knowl­edges the con­cern of fake po­lice and the meth­ods to ad­dress it, it was ad­vo­cat­ing for all di­vi­sion­al task forces to be al­lowed to wear dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage uni­forms.

“Over the next six months, the ser­vice should es­tab­lish, iden­ti­fy and ac­quire a stan­dard­ised op­er­a­tional wear con­ducive to our coun­try’s cli­mate and ter­rain. The as­so­ci­a­tion stands ready to as­sist in this re­gard.”

Philbert: Give it a chance

Mean­while, for­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er James Philbert said the or­der was need­ed, since the use of tac­ti­cal wear was be­ing abused.

Asked if he thinks this will in­flu­ence the abuse of po­lice cloth­ing be­ing used by crim­i­nals, Philbert said it might, and the coun­try should give it a chance.

“It might, we will see what hap­pens. If the crim­i­nals want to pur­sue wear­ing grey and blue, and I don’t know if it has ever hap­pened in the past, but it is a step in the di­rec­tion of mak­ing some­thing not so easy,” he said.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the di­rec­tive was for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who claimed it was a retroac­tive step. He said po­lice tac­ti­cal wear or cloth­ing re­sem­bling that is eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble, and po­lice uni­forms should be changed, a process he had ac­tu­al­ly ini­ti­at­ed be­fore his con­tract end­ed in 2021.

“Re­vert­ing to the grey uni­forms of the 1960s is not progress; it is re­gres­sion, and this de­ci­sion is in­dica­tive of the larg­er is­sues plagu­ing the lead­er­ship of the po­lice ser­vice, where, in­stead of em­brac­ing in­no­va­tion and for­ward-think­ing so­lu­tions, there is a fear of change that pulls us back to out­dat­ed prac­tices,” Grif­fith said.

For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) mem­ber Mar­tin George al­so said the fo­cus should be on em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy rather than chang­ing uni­forms. He said im­per­son­at­ing po­lice of­fi­cers is not unique to Trinidad and To­ba­go and crim­i­nals will con­tin­ue to find a way to do so.

“One is not sure as to how much the ef­fi­ca­cy of such an ac­tion is re­al­ly go­ing to im­pact the prob­lem when the prob­lem re­al­ly is de­tec­tion, ar­rest­ing and charg­ing, that’s what we need to do. In oth­er words, the po­lice ser­vice needs to get up to speed with fa­cial recog­ni­tion soft­ware,” George said.

The is­sue of men dressed as po­lice reignit­ed af­ter the kid­nap­ping of busi­ness­man Su­vesh Ram­nar­ine last Sat­ur­day. The 33-year-old busi­ness­man was ab­duct­ed from Rob’s Bar in Cunu­pia by five men dressed in po­lice tac­ti­cal wear. A $3 mil­lion ran­som has been de­mand­ed for his safe re­turn. Up to late yes­ter­day, he re­mained in the hands of his kid­nap­pers.