DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Kei­th Scot­land, has no up­dates on the sta­tus of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s (PolSC) Pub­lic Trust, Con­fi­dence, and Sat­is­fac­tion Sur­vey, which was in­tend­ed to as­sess the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers. The sur­vey had been sched­uled to run from Sep­tem­ber 17 to Oc­to­ber 8.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny’s (MTS) Spe­cial Elite Se­cu­ri­ty Unit at its Aranguez head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Scot­land ad­mit­ted he was not privy to the de­tails of the sur­vey but em­pha­sised that the in­com­ing mem­bers of the PolSC had sig­nif­i­cant work to do in re­build­ing pub­lic trust in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“Things need to be done. More prac­ti­cal and ur­gent acts need to be tak­en to fos­ter greater trust,” he stat­ed.

The 2022 PolSC re­port, tabled in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last No­vem­ber, high­light­ed the grav­i­ty of the is­sue, re­veal­ing that on­ly eight per cent of cit­i­zens be­lieved the po­lice were ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress­ing crime.

Scot­land ex­pressed op­ti­mism that ini­tia­tives such as the re­cent­ly launched Joint Task Force One, op­er­a­tional in five di­vi­sions, could help re­store con­fi­dence by in­creas­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of joint po­lice and army pa­trols. He al­so point­ed to the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTPS an­ti-ex­tor­tion unit in Oc­to­ber as an­oth­er step to­ward im­prov­ing pub­lic trust.

Mean­while, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher af­firmed her sup­port for the new­ly ap­proved PolSC mem­bers, not­ing no is­sues with their ap­point­ment.

“Any po­lice ser­vice com­mis­sion that is ap­point­ed, I am OK with. I have my job to do, and they have theirs and I be­lieve we will con­tin­ue to have a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship,” she said.