The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is do­ing its part to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of pa­trons at­tend­ing the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) in T&T, even as the coun­try re­mains un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

As­sur­ing lo­cals and vis­i­tors alike that the TTPS had a “ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy” in place and were pre­pared for any even­tu­al­i­ty, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Wayne Mys­tar on Tues­day shied away from say­ing how this dif­fered from the host­ing of the an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade, which has been can­celled amidst na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

In­stead, the CPL Gold Com­man­der as­sured the TTPS was “Ful­ly pre­pared to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all pa­trons at­tend­ing the up­com­ing CPL T20 tour­na­ment.”

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­stra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, he added, “Giv­en the cur­rent na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty cli­mate and the po­ten­tial risks as­so­ci­at­ed with ma­jor events, the TTPS would have iden­ti­fied and pre­pared for a range of sce­nar­ios in­clud­ing crimes against per­sons, pub­lic dis­tur­bances or ri­ots, acts of ter­ror­ism or dis­rup­tive ac­tiv­i­ties, med­ical emer­gen­cies and nati­ral dis­as­ters, road traf­fic in­ci­dents, and firearm re­lat­ed in­ci­dents.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ests the CPL had at­tract­ed, Mys­tar went on, “We are im­ple­ment­ing a ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy to pro­vide a safe en­vi­ron­ment for all.”

T&T’s first game will be­gin at 7 pm to­day, at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my, Tarou­ba – with the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers host­ing the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Fal­cons.

The re­main­ing games to be played in T&T will take place on Au­gust 29, Au­gust 30, Sep­tem­ber 1, and Sep­tem­ber 3.

The on­ly day­light game will take place on Sep­tem­ber 1, be­gin­ning at 11 am.

Mys­tar said, “The CPL is some­thing we host every sin­gle year, and this year is no ex­cep­tion, and we have an all clear to host the event.”

Re­veal­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) and the CPL had not is­sued any warn­ings up to yes­ter­day, Mys­tar went on, “We haven’t re­ceived any re­stric­tions as it re­lates to that par­tic­u­lar gath­er­ing, so based on that, we are go­ing all steam ahead as it re­lates to se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments.”

Pressed to say if he was sat­is­fied that the plan by the TTPS was ad­e­quate and suf­fi­cient­ly ad­dressed var­i­ous as­pects of se­cu­ri­ty in and out­side of the venue, he said an ar­ray of per­son­nel would be de­ployed.

This in­cludes of­fi­cers from spe­cialised units, peace of­fi­cers, traf­fic man­age­ment teams from the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch and the South­ern Di­vi­sion, crowd man­age­ment per­son­nel, crime de­tec­tion units, CCTV, and air sur­veil­lance.

With air sup­port be­ing pro­vid­ed via drone tech­nol­o­gy, pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms have al­so been draft­ed to as­sist in the over­all se­cu­ri­ty ef­forts.

He said, “We will have of­fi­cers in­side the sta­di­um and out­side.”

But due to the in­ter­na­tion­al brand­ing of the event, he added, “We will not al­low of­fi­cers with cam­ou­flage in­side the venue or with heavy arms, so you will see of­fi­cers in the ba­sic grey and blue. Out­side, you will have the heav­i­ly-armed of­fi­cers, as that is part of the whole ICC brand­ing and imag­ing, as they do not want to have that show of force ac­tu­al­ly in­side of the sta­di­um.”

Claim­ing the CPL had shone the spot­light on six Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries this year where events had been sched­uled, Mys­tar ex­plained that T&T was no stranger to host­ing games which con­tin­ued to at­tract larg­er crowds year­ly.

At­ten­dees have been ad­vised that re­stric­tions in­clude no cool­ers, no drinks or food from the out­side, no glass or plas­tic bot­tles, no um­brel­las, no lighters, no pro­fes­sion­al cam­eras, no back­packs, no weapons or sharp ob­jects, no drones, and no firearms.

Um­brel­las will on­ly be al­lowed for use dur­ing the day­light game sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 1, and Mys­tar said the or­gan­is­ers are adamant, “That it does not have any ad­ver­tise­ment on the um­brel­la it­self.”

This, he ex­plained, was in keep­ing with the ICC and CPL rules and reg­u­la­tions.

Peo­ple were told they could walk with rain­coats if they so de­sired, but were re­mind­ed that they could not be brand­ed.

Mys­tar in­di­cat­ed of­fi­cers will be ex­er­cis­ing dis­cre­tionary pow­ers in de­ter­min­ing if some pa­trons will be al­lowed to en­ter with cer­tain foods or bev­er­ages based on their health and di­etary re­quire­ments.

All Firearm User’s Li­cense (FULs) hold­ers have been ad­vised to lodge their weapons at the po­lice sta­tion be­fore ar­riv­ing at the venue, where gates will be opened three hours ahead of the sched­uled start.

Park­ing for VIP and VVIP will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed on the south­ern side of the venue, while lim­it­ed pub­lic park­ing will be pro­vid­ed on a first come, first serve ba­sis on the north­ern side of the fa­cil­i­ty.

Mys­tar warned that ad­di­tion­al traf­fic re­stric­tions will be in place with tem­po­rary clo­sures of sur­round­ing roads, along with one-way traf­fic con­ver­sions in and around the venue.

Mo­torists are warned that the south­bound ex­it ramp lead­ing to the Tarou­ba Link Road will be closed be­fore, dur­ing, and af­ter the games, and ad­just­ed ac­cess routes for en­try and ex­it of the venue.

Mys­tar urged mo­torists to avoid park­ing in unau­tho­rised ar­eas, adding that ab­solute­ly no park­ing would be al­lowed on the shoul­ders of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

Fixed penal­ty no­tices will be is­sued to mo­torists in breach of this, while breathal­yser tests will be ad­min­is­tered to peo­ple as they ex­it the games.

While there will be no wreck­ing tak­ing place, some mo­torists will be al­lowed to park as usu­al along the ac­cess ramps lead­ing in­to and out of the venue.

Mean­while, of­fi­cials ap­pealed to pa­trons to car­pool and use max­is to re­duce the num­ber of ve­hi­cles com­ing to the venue – and they have ad­vised that no cash is to be re­mit­ted to any­one for park­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty, which is free to the pub­lic.

The CPL kicked off in St Kitts on Au­gust 14 and will con­clude on Sep­tem­ber 21 in Guyana.

A to­tal of 34 games are sched­uled to be played in six Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing T&T, St Kitt’s, Guyana, St Lu­cia, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Bar­ba­dos – with each coun­try host­ing five games.