sto­ries by An­na-Lisa Paul

As law en­force­ment per­son­nel move through the cap­i­tal city in a Christ­mas an­ti-crime dri­ve, of­fi­cials have warned that is not a time for any­one to com­mit crimes in Port-of-Spain.

The stern di­rec­tive came dur­ing the launch of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion’s Christ­mas 2022 Pub­lic Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty Plan at the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade yes­ter­day.

Head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Roger Alexan­der said his of­fi­cers “will be go­ing through the city to see all who have been naughty and all who have been nice and at that time, we will sep­a­rate those who have been naughty from those who have been nice.”

He urged those think­ing the cap­i­tal was an easy tar­get filled with shop­pers and busi­ness­es to dis­abuse them­selves of that no­tion.

Alexan­der point­ed to the var­i­ous agen­cies which were present dur­ing yes­ter­day’s launch of Op­er­a­tion DEER as he said a holis­tic ap­proach was need­ed to get crime, which was both­er­ing every­one, un­der con­trol.

DEER which is an acronym for De­ter/Dis­rupt; En­force; Ed­u­cate; Re­sponse—promised to en­gi­neer ex­po­nen­tial change; the re­sults of which Alexan­der has promised will be seen in the com­ing weeks.

He said they could not con­tin­ue to do the same things that had been done in the past and ex­pect dif­fer­ent re­sults.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice North West Col­lis Hazel re­in­forced Alexan­der’s warn­ing as he stressed, “This is not a time for any­one think­ing of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty to en­ter in­to Port-of-Spain.”

Com­ment­ing on the amal­ga­ma­tion of se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies which had led to a care­ful analy­sis of the is­sues at hand, he en­cour­aged, “Now is the time for uni­ty. Now is time for to­geth­er­ness. Now is time for a team ap­proach.”

“No longer can we build a coun­try, a na­tion, a unit, by op­er­at­ing on an in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic per­spec­tive.”

Hazel said over 23,000 in­ter­na­tion­al cruise ship vis­i­tors had so far safe­ly docked in T&T since the bor­ders had re­opened which had en­tailed crime-fight­ing strate­gies for­mu­lat­ed un­der the DEER ini­tia­tive.

Fol­low­ing the re­moval of 10,000 plus il­le­gal guns from the streets of T&T dur­ing the past year, Hazel said a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of lives had been saved through the ef­forts of law en­force­ment.

“Don’t be naughty...con­tin­ue to be nice,” he added.

To those bent on en­gag­ing in crime, he de­liv­ered fight­ing words.

“Don’t judge the met­tle of our fab­ric be­cause we will de­ter you from do­ing that. We will deal with your naugh­ti­ness as we DEER up­on all the streets of the cap­i­tal in en­sur­ing each and every­one a safe and se­cure for Christ­mas in­to Car­ni­val and now con­tin­u­ing.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions, he said of­fi­cers in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion would main­tain in­creased vis­i­bil­i­ty on the streets.

Hazel shared, “Our aim is to en­sure that cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors alike feel safe and se­cure, and they can con­duct any busi­ness they have in peace and com­fort when they come in­to the cap­i­tal city.”

Seek­ing to en­sure that both na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als were able to prop­er­ly un­der­stand what was be­ing said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s launch, a spe­cial group of of­fi­cers en­gaged Span­ish-speak­ing per­sons to ex­plain.

Pressed to say how they were go­ing to im­prove the over­all op­er­a­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice, Alexan­der re­vealed, “The TTPS right now has to take an al­most busi­ness-like ap­proach.”

Claim­ing the pub­lic was now be­ing re­ferred to as cus­tomers, he went on, “You are not be­ing seen as a vic­tim. You are the cus­tomer and to sat­is­fy you, we must do what is need­ed, es­pe­cial­ly when the cus­tomer is al­ways right.”

Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez, mean­while, dared peo­ple not to be naughty in the city this sea­son, as he ap­plaud­ed the lat­est crime plan.

Re­fer­ring to com­mer­cial in­ter­ests want­i­ng to set up shop in Port-of-Spain, he said the busi­ness sec­tor along with the pro­tec­tive agen­cies and the ven­dors and users, all had a col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make sure the en­vi­ron­ment was clean and safe for such.

Urg­ing every­one to do their part in this ef­fort, he said, “The cap­i­tal city be­longs to each one of us and let us treat it as such.”

Mar­tinez chal­lenged the di­vi­sion­al heads to pro­vide his of­fice and the me­dia with week­ly up­dates and progress re­ports on just how suc­cess­ful crime-fight­ing ef­forts had been in each area of Port-of-Spain.

He said, “We need to know. Let us know that you are work­ing for us, the cit­i­zens. Show us that you mean busi­ness. Show us that you DEER to go and get the job done se­ri­ous­ly.”

The group lat­er walked along Hen­ry and Fred­er­ick Streets, hand­ing out in­for­ma­tion pam­phlets con­tain­ing tips for shop­pers dur­ing the sea­son, and ad­vis­ing per­sons on safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures they can adopt whilst out and about dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.