CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher says that she and her of­fi­cers re­main op­ti­mistic that their op­er­a­tions will be suc­cess­ful, and they will get the de­sired re­sults.

In re­sponse to ris­ing crime in this coun­try, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er says:

"These in­ci­dents will ob­vi­ous­ly cause con­cern for me. How­ev­er, I want to as­sure mem­bers of the pub­lic that these in­ci­dents are be­ing vig­or­ous­ly pur­sued. Po­lice Of­fi­cers are out there in full strength do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to pre­vent fur­ther oc­cur­rences."

She adds that, un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are those who re­main in­tent on cre­at­ing chaos and may­hem.

“Nev­er­the­less,” she points out, “over the past 24 hours, aris­ing out of many na­tion­wide an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es, three il­le­gal firearms, over 3 kilo­grams of mar­i­jua­na were seized and over 15 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed for var­i­ous of­fences.”

CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher as­serts: "The of­fi­cers are work­ing ex­treme­ly hard to pre­vent such sit­u­a­tions in every prac­ti­cal way."

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will con­tin­ue to be out there us­ing all our re­sources and in­tel­li­gence, and work­ing tire­less­ly and re­lent­less­ly to pre­vent these sit­u­a­tions,” she as­sures.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, de­spite our best ef­forts, un­less cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors com­ply with the law, ex­er­cise re­straint, and co­op­er­ate with the po­lice in treat­ing with law­less­ness, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of these in­ci­dents oc­cur­ring will con­tin­ue to be our chal­lenge. We have a very ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tional plan in ef­fect, and we will per­se­vere in our ef­forts and con­tin­ue to be proac­tive and dili­gent in per­form­ing our du­ty dur­ing this car­ni­val sea­son," she said.