Some peo­ple may ar­gue the role of the Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment (SVD) is sole­ly to in­ves­ti­gate sex­u­al and trau­ma-re­lat­ed crimes, but those lead­ing the charge say they al­so have a role to play in bridg­ing the so­cial and eco­nom­ic di­vide that ex­ists.

In ac­cept­ing a do­na­tion of 35 food box­es and six sig­na­ture blan­kets from the Rapid Re­lief Team (RRT) on Wednes­day, the head of the SVD, Supt Michelle Row­ley-Pow­der ac­knowl­edged that of­fi­cers wear many hats. Speak­ing at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion where the SVD is lo­cat­ed, Row­ley-Pow­der said, “As po­lice of­fi­cers, as the TTPS, we have mul­ti­ple roles.

“Apart from just in­ves­ti­gat­ing crimes, to­geth­er with the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port team, our role is al­so to pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal and so­cial sup­port for vic­tims of Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence.”

Point­ing to the white and blue box­es stacked on the ta­ble that bore the slo­gan Com­pas­sion in Ac­tion, which will be dis­trib­uted to vic­tims of sex­u­al and trau­ma-re­lat­ed crimes, she con­tin­ued, “Dur­ing our course of du­ty, we en­counter fam­i­lies on a dai­ly ba­sis. Some of these fam­i­lies are less priv­i­leged.”

Row­ley-Pow­der al­so ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion for stake­hold­ers will­ing to help those less for­tu­nate to reach out to the SVD.

Con­firm­ing her unit wel­comed projects such as these, where a whole-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach was need­ed, she shared her vi­sion for the year ahead.

She said, “This is where we would like our so­ci­ety to be, look­ing out for each oth­er, tak­ing care of each oth­er, pro­vid­ing for each oth­er.

“Many times we are see­ing that vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­turn­ing to their abusers be­cause of fi­nan­cial con­straints and some­times we won­der, couldn’t some­one have of­fered some help? Couldn’t any­body else pro­vide any bit of help so that the vic­tim could have been stand­ing on bet­ter ground?”

She com­mend­ed the RRT for its un­der­stand­ing and ac­cep­tance in meet­ing vic­tims where they were.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as she stood next to Row­ley-Pow­der was Op­er­a­tions Su­per­vi­sor, Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU), Janelle Se­bastien-Reyes, who is hold­ing strong to the be­lief that the sit­u­a­tion in T&T can be fixed with a healthy serv­ing of gen­eros­i­ty and kind­ness.

As part of their man­date, she said, “The VW­SU has been in­volved in a Christ­mas Kind­ness Project for the past sev­en years where we give 150 vic­tims and wit­ness­es of crime, through­out T&T, just a small to­ken to help them through the process of any sort of crime and trau­ma-re­lat­ed event that they would have faced dur­ing this year.”

Ap­peal­ing for co­op­er­a­tion from the wider so­ci­ety as the au­thor­i­ties could not do it alone, Se­bastien-Reyes re­in­forced, “We have to be our broth­er’s keep­er if we are to fix T&T.”

Shar­ing a lit­tle about the lo­cal chap­ter of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion he works for - Philip Mings, Team Lead, RRT, thanked the TTPS for ac­cept­ing their do­na­tion.

He told Row­ley-Pow­der and Se­bastien-Reyes, “We would like to thank the TTPS for their hard work. We ap­pre­ci­ate what you do. Most of it goes un­no­ticed and most of it is in a neg­a­tive light but we ap­pre­ci­ate what you guys do.”

The RRT is a glob­al char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion which was born out of the re­lief ef­forts to stop the ma­jor bush­fires in Aus­tralia from spread­ing back in 2011.

It cur­rent­ly op­er­ates in 14 coun­tries glob­al­ly, with vol­un­teers num­ber­ing 14,500.