Se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lyst and 868 Tac­ti­cal Lim­it­ed CEO Dirk Barnes says it is time for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to change its uni­forms and op­er­a­tions when in­ter­act­ing with the pub­lic.

Barnes’ com­ments came fol­low­ing re­ports of at least four re­cent crimes com­mit­ted by men dressed as po­lice of­fi­cers.

The lat­est such in­ci­dent was an armed rob­bery at the home of Cen­tral busi­ness­man Ra­jen­dra Maye.

“We should be very care­ful to call those tac­ti­cal ban­dits im­posters. I just want to be very care­ful about do­ing that be­cause un­til some­body proves oth­er­wise, they are dressed like a par­tic­u­lar unit, I would want to be­lieve they are mem­bers of that unit un­til proven oth­er­wise. In terms of how the pub­lic should re­act, I would echo the sen­ti­ment of the (act­ing) Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, that if po­lice of­fi­cers come to your home to ex­e­cute a war­rant you should com­ply. Don’t jump to the con­clu­sion that ob­vi­ous­ly would have been im­posters and take some ac­tion that you may re­gret in the fu­ture,” Barnes said.

He said po­lice uni­forms are ex­treme­ly easy to ob­tain, not­ing there are sev­er­al on­line Face­book and tac­ti­cal stores across the coun­try where such uni­forms can be pur­chased.

“What you’re talk­ing about is called a bat­tle dress uni­form top and a black bat­tle dress uni­form pants. You can go on Ama­zon, eBay or even go to any one of the tac­ti­cal sites in Trinidad and To­ba­go and buy the very same gar­ment, you don’t re­quire any kind of check. It’s used by se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, it’s used by peo­ple cut­ting their grass, it is used by peo­ple who go in to play paint­ball. So, these uni­forms are eas­i­ly ac­quired and the chal­lenge here is that this is not some­thing new, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, even un­der the last com­mis­sion­er, had iden­ti­fied that those uni­forms need­ed to be changed.”

He added that there al­so needs to be a stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the uni­forms in the TTPS.

“You can take po­lice of­fi­cers from dif­fer­ent di­vi­sions and line all of them up. I dare you, 12 of­fi­cers, and I doubt you will find two that look the same. I have seen po­lice of­fi­cers wear­ing tight gear look­ing like span­dex type of bat­tle dress uni­form pants, some peo­ple want to roll sleeves down and some peo­ple who keep them down,” he added.

“That makes it dif­fi­cult for the pub­lic to iden­ti­fy them ver­sus some­body else who has ill in­ten­tions.”

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob an­nounced last week that the TTPS is ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss the uni­form is­sue with its sup­pli­ers, in­clud­ing look­ing at a re­turn to the old stan­dard grey and blue uni­forms, in the wake of a se­ries of in­ci­dents in­volv­ing peo­ple who were dressed in po­lice uni­forms.

On­ly yes­ter­day, the TTPS is­sued a state­ment ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to look out for marked po­lice ve­hi­cles, sirens and flash­ing lights and of­fi­cers with TTPS-is­sued badges when search war­rants are be­ing ex­e­cut­ed.

The TTPS al­so re­mind­ed that it is an of­fence to im­per­son­ate a po­lice of­fi­cer.