Coun­ty Ca­roni is the lead­ing place of Covid-19 in­fec­tions and deaths, ac­cord­ing to Head of the Cen­tral Po­lice Di­vi­sion Curt Si­mon. Si­mon was speak­ing dur­ing Thurs­day’s T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s me­dia con­fer­ence held at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain.

Si­mon was try­ing to bring home the point that de­spite the fact that T&T is cur­rent­ly in a pan­dem­ic his of­fi­cers are try­ing their best in polic­ing ef­forts es­pe­cial­ly in the fight against crime.”The Cen­tral Di­vi­sion is unique as it falls in Ca­roni and if you fol­low the num­bers it is a lead­ing place with the amount of in­fec­tions and deaths,” Si­mon said.”Dai­ly a num­ber of per­sons are com­ing to the of­fice for cre­ma­tions and it is af­fect­ing our of­fi­cers yet they are able to func­tion and keep their heads up and chins up. We call up­on them and they re­spond and we are very thank­ful for them for that es­pe­cial­ly go­ing in­to the Christ­mas,” he added.

Si­mon urged the res­i­dents in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion to pay spe­cial cog­nizance, “be a lit­tle more cog­nizant to the pub­lic health pro­to­cols so your lives can be saved.”
In ad­dress­ing the up­surge in crimes, Si­mon said they are con­cerned with shoot­ings and wound­ings but as­sured that their de­tec­tion rate is up to 50 per cent, a five per cent in­crease from last year.

He fur­ther ex­plained that be­cause their de­tec­tion rate is up he be­lieves it sup­press­es the mur­der rate from go­ing up as well.”We are able to peg back se­ri­ous crimes in the di­vi­sion and we’re per­form­ing bet­ter now in this pe­ri­od than last year with a five per­cent de­crease and we ex­pect that by year’s end we would be able to see a bet­ter per­for­mance and be able to talk on it more,” Si­mon said.

Al­so speak­ing at the me­dia con­fer­ence, Op­er­a­tions Supt Michael Pierre dis­closed that one of the ini­tia­tives launched by the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion is a pro­gramme for the So­cial­ly Dis­placed who they sus­pects are re­spon­si­ble for crimes in the En­ter­prise and Lange Park ar­eas.”It is a holis­tic ap­proach to crime-fight­ing where we are tar­get­ing of­fend­ers but we have looked at the soft and hard ap­proach and short term and long term projects to bring con­trol in the di­vi­sion.

Street dwellers, over a pe­ri­od of time, some crimes em­anate through those home­less per­sons and through Sgt Small we have em­barked up­on a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme,” Pierre said. He added that so far they have had four suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants so far.

Re­porter: Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant