Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ag) Mc Don­ald Ja­cob says the TTPS is mov­ing to in­crease the num­ber of charges for those in­volved in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and squat­ting on state lands. Ja­cobs made the an­nounce­ment af­ter meet­ing with the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man, Anil Juter­am, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Bet­ty-Ann Di­al, and their 12 Coun­cil­lors to ad­dress is­sues of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in the Bor­ough. The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the TTPS:

Con­duc­tors of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and those squat­ting on State lands are be­ing put on no­tice that the po­lice are mov­ing to in­crease the num­ber of charges of those bent on breach­ing those laws.

The warn­ing comes fol­low­ing a meet­ing to­day with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ag.) Mc Don­ald Ja­cob, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Ex­ec­u­tive and the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man, Anil Juter­am, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Bet­ty-Ann Di­al, and their 12 Coun­cil­lors to ad­dress is­sues of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in the Bor­ough.

Com­mis­sion­er (Ag.) Ja­cob, who took keen in­ter­est in the con­tri­bu­tions of the Cor­po­ra­tion’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, re­spond­ed with a com­pre­hen­sive plan to the com­mit­tee in which he high­light­ed the TTPS’ thrust in tack­ling un­planned de­vel­op­ments (squat­ting) and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing CoP (Ag.) Ja­cob in­tro­duced ASP Haynes from the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mon­i­tor­ing il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and the un­law­ful de­vel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ties.

This Unit is spe­cial­ly trained and works with the Land Set­tle­ment Agency and oth­er re­lat­ed agen­cies. Ac­cord­ing to the CoP (Ag.) Ja­cob and the TTPS’ sta­tis­tics, these oc­cur­rences, are large con­trib­u­tors to crime in the Di­vi­sion as these ac­tiv­i­ties tend to lead to gang ac­tiv­i­ty, vi­o­lent crimes, and in some cas­es, mur­der.

The Com­mis­sion­er al­so re­vealed that as part of this strat­e­gy there will be a re­train­ing of of­fi­cers, who will al­so be pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary equip­ment, such as boots for the ter­rain the of­fi­cers would have to tra­verse. The Top Cop al­so dis­cussed util­is­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing of­fi­cers to in­fil­trate the com­mu­ni­ty and help de­sist per­sons from en­ter­ing in­to a life of crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly through agri­cul­tur­al projects.

Af­ter his pre­sen­ta­tion, Com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob made an ap­peal to the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to part­ner with the TTPS through al­tru­ism, giv­ing self­less­ly to their neigh­bours and com­mu­ni­ty at large. He fur­ther im­plored that even with lim­it­ed re­sources, the com­bined ef­forts of the po­lice and com­mu­ni­ty will res­cue the East­ern Di­vi­sion from these trends.

The Cor­po­ra­tion pledged their sup­port and vowed to work as a col­lec­tive to bring that change in­to fruition. Al­so present at the meet­ing were Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ag.), In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Pamela Schullera-Hinds and As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ag.), Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence, Sharon Coop­er, who al­so field­ed ques­tions from the lo­cal gov­ern­ment team. Chair­man Anil Juter­am thanked CoP (Ag.) Ja­cob for vis­it­ing the “food bas­ket of the na­tion,” and pledged his team’s full com­mit­ment to work­ing with the TTPS to curb crime.