Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Heavy spot­light on gangs, re­cruit­ment of paid in­form­ers and ze­ro tol­er­ance on po­lice in­dis­ci­pline, cor­rup­tion as well as of­fi­cers whose ab­sence caus­es cas­es to be dis­missed are among the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) plans to com­bat vi­o­lence in the coun­try. Some as­pects of the TTPS plan were pre­sent­ed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher at cer­tain fo­rums re­cent­ly.

Dis­cus­sions on se­cu­ri­ty are among the main events when the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers’ week-long an­nu­al con­fer­ence starts to­mor­row at the Hy­att, Port-of-Spain. T&T’s CoP is ex­pect­ed to be present.

TTPS’ plan be­gan by ac­knowl­edg­ing that vi­o­lent crimes, es­pe­cial­ly gun-re­lat­ed homi­cides, have been in­creas­ing at a phe­nom­e­nal rate, fu­elling wide­spread fear across so­ci­ety.

Ac­cord­ing to the plan, “The prob­lem is built around gangs, guns, and drugs” and there must be a turn­around in 2023 with tar­get­ed re­duc­tions of vi­o­lence and fear by De­cem­ber 31.

The plan stat­ed that a very small num­ber of peo­ple are re­spon­si­ble for most of T&T’s vi­o­lent crimes and the ma­jor­i­ty oc­cur in a very small num­ber of places (“hot spots”–and al­so oc­cur with­in a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od of the day and on spe­cif­ic days “hot times”).

It was not­ed that il­le­gal firearms are smug­gled in­to T&T in­di­vid­u­al­ly or grouped with nar­cotics; us­ing both le­gal ports and il­le­gal sea points of en­try.

183 il­le­gal T&T ports

The doc­u­ment stat­ed there are 38 le­gal ports in Trinidad and 156 il­le­gal ones.

In To­ba­go, there are three le­gal ports and 27 il­le­gal ports.

The plan not­ed a high preva­lence of il­le­gal firearms. In­tel­li­gence from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) sug­gests an es­ti­mat­ed 11,043 il­le­gal firearms ex­ist lo­cal­ly.

The top four po­lice di­vi­sions for il­le­gal firearms are North­ern (3,937 ), South­ern (2,453), Cen­tral (1,493), and PoS (1,196 ).

Plans in­clude of­fi­cers in each po­lice di­vi­sion to col­lect and process in­tel­li­gence on il­le­gal firearms, spe­cial units to fo­cus on il­le­gal firearms as a pri­or­i­ty and in­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion with US au­thor­i­ties to dis­rupt the traf­fick­ing of firearms from the US to T&T.

All out against gangs

In a bid to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal gangs, the ex­ter­nal fo­cus in­cludes:

• Sub­stan­tial­ly in­creas­ing the num­ber of of­fi­cers ded­i­cat­ed to the dis­man­tling of gangs.

• Op­er­a­tional­is­ing Gang In­tel­li­gence Units in each po­lice di­vi­sion.

• Ex­ten­sive da­ta in­clud­ing gang sizes, lo­ca­tions, modus operan­di, and pro­file of mem­bers/as­so­ciates.

• Iden­ti­fy­ing/tar­get­ing the most vi­o­lent gang mem­bers in each po­lice di­vi­sion, most pro­lif­ic of­fend­ers, with out­stand­ing war­rants, drug deal­ers etc.

• Re­cruit­ing paid in­for­mants to gath­er hu­man in­tel­li­gence.

• Us­ing rel­e­vant law to dis­rupt gang ac­tiv­i­ties.

• Pre­ci­sion-dri­ven en­force­ment/pre­ven­tion strate­gies in per­sis­tent vi­o­lent hot spots.

• Iden­ti­fy­ing drug blocks in each di­vi­sion in­clud­ing deal­ers/as­so­ciates.

• Col­lab­o­rat­ing with SSA, Cus­toms, De­fence Force, Prison Ser­vice and Im­mi­gra­tion on ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing bor­der man­age­ment and dis­rup­tion of or­gan­ised crime from prison.

• Im­proved op­er­a­tional­is­ing of the Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime Strat­e­gy and TTPS’ Transna­tion­al Crime Unit (TOCU) with more re­sources.

Ze­ro-tol­er­ance on po­lice in­dis­ci­pline, cor­rup­tion

In­ter­nal­ly, the fo­cus in­cludes:

• Per­for­mance stan­dards for deal­ing with dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters.

• En­hance re­sources at the Com­plaints Di­vi­sion and the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau.

• Pri­or­i­ty con­sid­er­a­tion to all com­plaints of cor­rup­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary breach­es.

• Ac­count pub­licly for ac­tion tak­en against po­lice of­fi­cers for breach­es of the law.

• In­crease the com­ple­ment of pa­trol of­fi­cers by in­clud­ing all First Di­vi­sion Of­fi­cers and of­fi­cers from spe­cial­ist units, branch­es, and sec­tions.

• Co-or­di­nate the vis­i­ble pres­ence of all po­lice agen­cies in­clud­ing TTPS, Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, Tran­sit Po­lice, and Traf­fic War­dens.

• Up­grad­ing the sys­tem for mon­i­tor­ing po­lice re­sponse/ef­fec­tive­ness.

• Mon­i­tor ef­fi­cien­cy in the use of ex­ist­ing re­sources.

• En­gage T&T Po­lice and So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion to se­cure of­fi­cers’ com­mit­ment.

• Col­lab­o­rate with the DPP to give the high­est pri­or­i­ty to the pros­e­cu­tion of vi­o­lent of­fend­ers.

• Com­pile case files with­in the stip­u­lat­ed time and sub­mit them to pros­e­cu­tors.

• En­sure wit­ness­es at­tend court on the tri­al date.

• Hold di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders ac­count­able through fort­night­ly COMP­STAT (com­put­er sta­tis­tics) for the per­for­mance of their di­vi­sions.

• Month­ly com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings in each di­vi­sion to ac­count for per­for­mance/re­ceive feed­back.

• Tar­get crimes of traf­fick­ing in drugs, firearms, and hu­mans, mon­ey laun­der­ing, and cy­ber­crime.

• In­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion with lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies.

• Im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Na­tion­al Polic­ing Dig­i­tal Strat­e­gy.

Where we want to be by De­cem­ber 31, 2023

• 10 per cent re­duc­tion in Lar­ce­ny of Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles

• ↓20 peo­ple charged un­der the An­ti Gang Act

• 40 pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers ar­rest­ed and charged

• 5 per cent de­crease in fa­tal ac­ci­dents

• 20 pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed