Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has stopped short of set­ting a time­line for re­sults in the fight against crime but says his “ex­cep­tion­al re­la­tion­ship” with Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der lays the ground­work for pos­i­tive out­comes very soon.

Ap­pear­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day—just days be­fore mark­ing one month in of­fice—Gue­var­ro ex­pressed con­fi­dence that their col­lab­o­ra­tion could de­liv­er re­sults.

His com­ments come days af­ter Alexan­der asked the pub­lic to be pa­tient as Gov­ern­ment ad­dress­es the is­sue of crime. Gue­var­ro said, “The work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Mr Alexan­der and my­self has been ex­cep­tion­al. We have had sev­er­al meet­ings thus far in treat­ing with par­tic­u­lar is­sues that have come to the fore. I would en­vi­sion that un­der my lead­er­ship of the TTPS and his stew­ard­ship of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, we will be­gin to see some changes very soon.”

Gue­var­ro would not give a time­line of when he ex­pect­ed to see re­sults but would on­ly say the crime prob­lem runs far deep­er than in re­cent years.

“This is some­thing that has been per­va­sive­ly get­ting worse over the past 20 to 25 years. As I said, it’s not like we can just throw a switch or press a mag­ic but­ton or wave a mag­ic wand and solve the prob­lems overnight. We are look­ing at holis­tic, both cur­rent and holis­tic, long-term strate­gies that would not on­ly re­duce crime now but en­sure that it is main­tained for the fu­ture.”

He al­so voiced his sup­port for Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

“The on­ly way we will be able to de­ter­mine if it will help or harm is af­ter it is put in­to ef­fect. I sup­port any leg­is­la­tion that would as­sist mem­bers of the pub­lic in pro­tect­ing them­selves. I sup­port not on­ly stand-your-ground but any leg­is­la­tion that would al­low for per­sons to law­ful­ly pro­tect them­selves.” Gue­var­ro said.

The for­mer in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cer al­so said the TTPS needs to steer in­tel­li­gence ef­forts more to­ward tech­ni­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal aids, en­sur­ing they work “in uni­son with hu­man in­tel­li­gence”.

Gue­var­ro ex­plained, “If you have an AI mod­el or pre­dic­tive in­tel­li­gence tool, such as what ex­ists else­where in the world, like Pred­Pol or Laser or any one of those IUNs in Dubai, you would then have that par­tic­u­lar piece of tech­nol­o­gy or soft­ware get­ting in­puts from the da­ta of hu­man in­tel­li­gence as well as the da­ta that cur­rent­ly ex­ists, where we can start do­ing crime map­ping, track­ing of crim­i­nals, and you have oth­er as­pects.

“You have per­sons with an­kle mon­i­tor­ing. You have CCTV footage. We have ve­hi­cle data­base in­for­ma­tion. We have all of these things com­ing to­geth­er, where we can now be­gin to see in­tel­li­gence take a dif­fer­ent role in how we treat with crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty and the re­sponse to crime.”

The top cop has been try­ing to clear a back­log of Firearms Users’ Li­cences (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tions since as­sum­ing the role.

When asked whether he ex­pects an in­crease in ap­pli­ca­tions if stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion is en­act­ed, Gue­var­ro said, “Ap­pli­ca­tion does not mean ap­proval. Ad­ju­di­ca­tion means that the per­sons who de­serve a Firearm Users’ Li­cence will get a Firearm Users’ Li­cence. It’s not like every­one can ap­ply and just get a gun. You must pass the ACID test.”

He al­so re­vealed he has re­ceived a list of 40 schools which are des­ig­nat­ed as high risk and will have a po­lice pres­ence from the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

While the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er did not re­veal the names of the schools, he said, “We have al­ready re­ceived a list of the high-risk schools, and at this time, the TTPS is ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing in train­ing of of­fi­cers to take up those po­si­tions. So, I’d like to re­as­sure the pub­lic that the TTPS stands ready to take back the schools from the vi­o­lent el­e­ments that ex­ist.”