Traf­fic war­dens are still re­spect­ed mem­bers of the law en­force­ment com­mu­ni­ty, and a re­cent in­ci­dent is not a true re­flec­tion of the ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the traf­fic war­dens and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

This was the mes­sage sent yes­ter­day by the TTPS dur­ing a meet­ing with a con­tin­gent of traf­fic war­dens and act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice Ram­nar­ine Sama­roo and Curt Simon.

The meet­ing took place in the Solomon McLeod Lec­ture The­atre at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of- Spain and was au­tho­rised by Chief Traf­fic War­den Neville Sankar and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice-elect Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“The role of the traf­fic war­dens is very im­por­tant to the over­all se­cu­ri­ty of the pub­lic, and this hard work and ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice will con­tin­ue to be recog­nised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), as they con­tin­ue to play a crit­i­cal part in crime re­duc­tion,” a me­dia re­lease is­sued by the TTPS stat­ed.

Si­mon said he did not want to com­ment on the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer and traf­fic war­dens in Port-of-Spain that is now be­fore the court. An off-du­ty cop who was in­volved in that in­ci­dent, a video of which went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, was charged fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent.

How­ev­er, Si­mon said he want­ed to ad­dress the emo­tion­al im­pact the in­ci­dent had on all uni­formed of­fi­cers.

Si­mon said: “The TTPS and traf­fic war­dens have a har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship de­spite the in­ci­dent and that go­ing for­ward, we will con­tin­ue to build our re­la­tion­ship.”

Giv­en the im­por­tance of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both par­ties, Sama­roo asked those present for ideas about what could be done to im­prove their re­la­tion­ship.

The traf­fic war­dens, who were from dif­fer­ent re­gions across the coun­try, were ea­ger to prof­fer sug­ges­tions and so­lu­tions.

Us­ing al­ter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, such as What­sApp chat groups to share in­for­ma­tion, the use of drone tech­nol­o­gy al­ready in use by po­lice to help traf­fic war­dens and the shar­ing of con­tact in­for­ma­tion with re­gion­al TTPS Com­mand Cen­tres, were just some of the ideas shared and dis­cussed.

The traf­fic war­dens al­so said lessons should be learnt from the re­cent in­ci­dent, as per­sons should be trained in the ar­eas of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, anger man­age­ment and de-es­ca­la­tion of sit­u­a­tions, to pre­vent and min­imise the risk of un­want­ed pub­lic in­ci­dents.

Traf­fic war­dens said the re­cent in­ci­dent would not af­fect the con­tin­ued pro­fes­sion­al and har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship be­tween both or­gan­i­sa­tions.