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Wednesday, May 28, 2025

TTPS restricts vacation leave, wants more officers in high crime areas

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
642 days ago
20230825
Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police, Administration and Operational Support, Ramnarine Samaroo.

Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police, Administration and Operational Support, Ramnarine Samaroo.

KERWIN PIERRE

The coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion has led to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice re­strict­ing leave for all po­lice of­fi­cers at this time. The move is meant to boost the TTPS’ man­pow­er in the streets, par­tic­u­lar­ly in crime hot spots.

In a memo ti­tled Leave Re­stric­tion dat­ed Au­gust 23 to all heads of Di­vi­sions, Branch­es and Sec­tions of the TTPS, act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Op­er­a­tional Sup­port, Ram­nar­ine Sama­roo wrote, “Due to the ex­i­gen­cies of the ser­vice, all ap­pli­ca­tions for va­ca­tion leave ex­ceed­ing 14 days or re­quir­ing per­mis­sion to pro­ceed out of the coun­try will be re­strict­ed un­til fur­ther no­tice.”

The memo al­so stat­ed, “This mea­sure has be­come nec­es­sary to fa­cil­i­tate cur­rent an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives where ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er is re­quired to stymie the on­slaught of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Sama­roo said, “We have an up­surge in crime and that is what prompt­ed this as we need­ed ad­di­tion­al strength to do some ad­di­tion­al pa­trols.”

He de­nied there was a man­pow­er short­age in the TTPS. “We just need­ed some ad­di­tion­al strength in cer­tain high-crime ar­eas so we can have an in­creased po­lice pres­ence out­side at all times,” Sama­roo said.

He de­clined to say just how many of­fi­cers were on the pay­roll of the TTPS; how many were cur­rent­ly on leave; and what were the ide­al num­bers they were look­ing to put on the streets.

Asked how long this lat­est re­stric­tion was ex­pect­ed to re­main in ef­fect, Sama­roo as­sured it was, “Tem­po­rary un­til we get the crime rate down.”

He fur­ther told Guardian Me­dia it had be­come nec­es­sary, “For the na­tion’s safe­ty.”

De­clar­ing this was not a new strat­e­gy and had been em­ployed sev­er­al times in the past, Sama­roo said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion had not de­vel­oped overnight but re­quired “cer­tain moves now to get the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol.”

Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion:

All hands need­ed now

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) Pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son wel­comed the move.

“The de­ci­sion at this point in time we know, that it is con­struct un­der the per­spec­tive that some things are go­ing to be done op­er­a­tional wise, to treat with the crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty that cur­rent­ly ex­ists in our beloved twin-is­land state,” he ex­plained.

He agreed the all-hands-on-deck ap­proach was nec­es­sary for the au­thor­i­ties, “To do a push back on what is tak­ing place.”

But Dick­son ac­knowl­edged that the di­rec­tive would cause some in­con­ve­nience for both of­fi­cers and their fam­i­lies.

“The re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion is one where there was a need for us to do some­thing dif­fer­ent at this point in time and utilise the re­sources we have to be able to dri­ve the crim­i­nal el­e­ments back,” he said.

In­di­cat­ing that long-term re­strict­ed leave for of­fi­cers was last in ef­fect dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Dick­son said some sort of nor­mal­cy had on­ly re­turned to the ser­vice last year. He said of­fi­cers had been util­is­ing leave to try and once again achieve a work-life bal­ance and to re­duce burn-out.

But Dick­son con­ced­ed, “In the in­ter­im, the crime can­not con­tin­ue to move in the di­rec­tion we are see­ing it there, es­pe­cial­ly where the homi­cides are con­cerned.”


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