AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA) claims the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for them to keep tick­et prices down for Car­ni­val events.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s, TTPA pres­i­dent Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la said there has been a 15 to 50 per cent drop in at­ten­dance at fetes this Car­ni­val sea­son, so they are call­ing on the TTPS to “get their act to­geth­er.”

“They have not had con­trol over the crime rate and they want to send ex­tra po­lice of­fi­cers be­cause it’s deemed a hotspot. We ful­ly wel­come that, but not at our cost,” Pre­cil­la said.

“We all have po­lice of­fi­cers, bills rang­ing from $18k, $38k, over $100k, we have had to pay as pro­mot­ers for some events for po­lice to at­tend.”

He said the TTPA is aware of the im­por­tance of hav­ing po­lice of­fi­cers present at events but the process has no struc­ture.

“It’s not on­ly the po­lice, it’s both the po­lice and the court that we have is­sues with. Some­times we get court dates for your event on the day of your event. You are go­ing out there to get your po­lice strength, they hit you with a po­lice bill. You have to find this mon­ey, pay the po­lice, come back to court to get it. You have no time to dis­pute this be­cause your event is prob­a­bly the same night,” he said.

Pre­cil­la said pro­mot­ers met with the TTPS on the is­sue but noth­ing has been re­solved. The TTPA al­so claimed they are un­sure of the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of po­lice of­fi­cers when they at­tend events in their num­bers armed and mak­ing fetes feel like a “war zone.”

“It gives that sense of se­cu­ri­ty but we are not al­lowed to di­rect these po­lice of­fi­cers as to where you would like them as­signed. We are not giv­en that priv­i­lege.

“We have no ju­ris­dic­tion over where they go, where are they po­si­tioned, what they do through­out the night. They rule them­selves. We pay­ing for this, but they rule them­selves. What their ex­act role and func­tion is again? We don’t know,” he said.

TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Joanne Archie con­firmed that there had been meet­ings with the TTPA but said she was un­aware of the claims they made yes­ter­day. She de­clined to make any fur­ther com­ment on the mat­ter.