As part of at­tempts to op­ti­mise ef­fi­cien­cies in the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, of­fi­cers of the Task Force will now be spread over two po­lice sta­tions to cov­er more ground.

The move was one of sev­er­al strate­gies con­firmed by the head of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Richard Smith dur­ing a town hall meet­ing in Mara­cas, St Joseph, on Thurs­day night.

Smith was trans­ferred from the South­ern Di­vi­sion to North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion a month ago amidst protests and con­cerns from sev­er­al cit­i­zens who were ac­cus­tomed to his style of polic­ing.

While ad­dress­ing a packed hall at the Mara­cas, St Joseph Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Smith said while it was his first time work­ing in the North­ern Di­vi­sion, he took time to get ac­quaint­ed with the lay­out of the neigh­bour­hoods and vis­it­ed po­lice sta­tions to un­der­stand the strengths and weak­ness­es.

He said one of the ma­jor changes made would in­clude as­sign­ing North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force of­fi­cers to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion to of­fer more cov­er­age.

The Task Force is a unit of po­lice that usu­al­ly re­sponds to high-lev­el threats and is trained in tac­tics.

In the past, of­fi­cers of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force were housed at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion, but will now have ad­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion at the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion.

Smith said this would al­so im­prove re­sponse times to emer­gen­cies and dis­tress calls.

"With our Task Force of­fi­cers based at the Arou­ca (Po­lice Sta­tion) it was dif­fi­cult for them to re­spond to crimes in the west­ern por­tion of the di­vi­sion, so we have since re­lo­cat­ed some of them to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion. Hav­ing done that we have since seen a huge dif­fer­ence.

"In terms of the crimes be­ing com­mit­ted in the west­ern part of the di­vi­sion, we have seen a re­duc­tion," he ex­plained.

He said there was a re­cent ad­di­tion of 35 of­fi­cers to the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and he was op­ti­mistic this added strength would make a dif­fer­ence in crime-fight­ing.

Smith said com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed po­lice of­fi­cers were al­so as­signed to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion, not­ing the con­cen­tra­tion of schools in the west­ern part of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

He said of­fi­cers of the Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tion (CSI) unit were al­so as­signed to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion.

He said the Tu­na­puna sta­tion once served as the head­quar­ters of the di­vi­sion and was large enough to fa­cil­i­tate these dif­fer­ent units.

The North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion ex­tends from St Joseph in the west to Arou­ca in the east.

It is sand­wiched by the North East­ern Di­vi­sion and the North­ern Di­vi­sion North.