An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Near­ly 9,500 peo­ple have ap­plied to join the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), with thou­sands turn­ing up at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James yes­ter­day for the first phase of the re­cruit­ment process.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Act­ing ASP, Po­lice Acad­e­my, Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Gushi­er Grant, re­vealed that 1,950 ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived through the on­line por­tal from peo­ple specif­i­cal­ly ap­ply­ing for yes­ter­day’s re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise.

She said 4,700 ap­pli­ca­tions had been processed over the last four days at lo­ca­tions in Mara­bel­la, Cou­va, Ari­ma and St James, while the TTPS had re­ceived a to­tal of 9,100 on­line ap­pli­ca­tions.

Grant ex­plained that some ap­pli­cants had ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ties up­load­ing their doc­u­ments, re­sult­ing in con­ces­sions be­ing made and bring­ing the fi­nal num­ber of ap­pli­cants to around 9,500

De­scrib­ing the pub­lic’s re­sponse to the re­cruit­ment dri­ve as “over­whelm­ing,” Grant said suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants would be ad­vised of the next step once the ver­i­fi­ca­tion and au­then­ti­ca­tion ex­er­cise was com­plet­ed.

“We are so proud that they de­cid­ed to come and serve their coun­try and the TTPS,” she said.

Suc­cess­ful can­di­dates will have to com­plete an on­line ex­am­i­na­tion and un­der­go phys­i­cal, med­ical and psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ments, along with drug and poly­graph test­ing.

While the TTPS can on­ly train 235 peo­ple at a time, Grant said the ser­vice has a wait­ing list and is seek­ing ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties to ac­com­mo­date more batch­es.

Grant said the ser­vice was hop­ing to train be­tween 700 and 800 peo­ple by next year, with the fig­ure po­ten­tial­ly in­creas­ing to around 1,000 af­ter that, in keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment’s promise to in­crease the sanc­tioned strength of the TTPS.

“We are get­ting a lot of young peo­ple and the fu­ture of the TTPS looks bright, and it is in good hands,” she said.

Ap­pli­cants: ‘We want to make a dif­fer­ence’

Yes­ter­day, ap­pli­cants, clutch­ing brown en­velopes and plas­tic fold­ers con­tain­ing their doc­u­ments, ar­rived with hopes of mak­ing it past the ini­tial stage of their jour­ney to­wards be­com­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.

For 25-year-old Aal­i­ha Hayes, join­ing the TTPS has al­ways been a dream.

Re­veal­ing she had de­cid­ed on the pro­fes­sion as her end goal af­ter leav­ing school, Hayes said, “They need a lit­tle more fe­males to as­sist them out­side.

“To help with the school chil­dren. Some fe­male of­fi­cers to talk to them. I want to help with the bet­ter­ment of the coun­try.”

Twen­ty-year-old Ty­ron For­tune said he grew up want­i­ng to be­come a po­lice of­fi­cer like his fa­ther.

Al­though he wants to be­come a phys­io­ther­a­pist and is cur­rent­ly study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, the Princes Town res­i­dent en­cour­aged oth­ers like him­self “to put your best foot for­ward.”

For twen­ty-five-year-old Ra­keem Joseph, “hop­ing to se­cure a job,” was what mo­ti­vat­ed him to ap­ply.

Joseph said his fam­i­ly and loved ones had cau­tioned him about the dan­gers of the pro­fes­sion, but it was not enough to de­ter him.

An­dra Ramkissoon, 26, a moth­er of two chil­dren, said she de­cid­ed to ap­ply be­cause polic­ing runs in her fam­i­ly.

“My fam­i­ly, my hus­band, every­body is in the ser­vice and I want­ed to join the ser­vice as well.”

De­spite the long hours her hus­band cur­rent­ly works, the safe­ty con­cerns and the per­son­al strug­gles the job has brought, Ramkissoon said, “As it comes, we will han­dle it.”

Mean­while, anx­ious fa­ther Ra­manan Ja­groop of St Au­gus­tine wait­ed in the swel­ter­ing heat for his 23-year-old daugh­ter, who had ar­rived to sub­mit her doc­u­ments.

Pray­ing that she is suc­cess­ful, he said, “If that is what she wants to do, I can’t stop her.”

While hap­py that his daugh­ter had cho­sen a ca­reer path, Ja­groop ad­mit­ted he was con­cerned about the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion and the un­cer­tain­ty of­fi­cers face dai­ly.