The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice pro­vid­ed a strong de­ter­rent to crime by con­duct­ing a se­ries of ex­er­cis­es, op­er­a­tions, and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ments which aimed at keep­ing the pub­lic safe over the In­di­an Ar­rival Day long week­end.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were ar­rest­ed across the coun­try for var­i­ous of­fences.

De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from the TTPS:

From as ear­ly as Wednes­day the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) sig­nalled its in­ten­tions to pro­vide a strong de­ter­rent to crime by con­duct­ing a se­ries of ex­er­cis­es, op­er­a­tions, and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ments which are part of a strate­gic ap­proach aimed at keep­ing the pub­lic safe over the In­di­an Ar­rival Day long week­end.

With pub­lic safe­ty in mind, of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion em­barked on “A Day of In­creased Po­lice Vis­i­bil­i­ty”, con­duct­ed be­tween Wednes­day 25th and Thurs­day 26th May. The op­er­a­tion in­clud­ed rov­ing road checks, traf­fic ex­er­cis­es, DUI ex­er­cis­es, raids and search­es and war­rant ex­er­cis­es. As a re­sult, 25 per­sons were ar­rest­ed for var­i­ous of­fences, 14 war­rants were ex­e­cut­ed, 1.06 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na and two rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion were found and seized.

Of­fi­cers of the North Cen­tral- North­ern Di­vi­sion con­tin­ued the push­back against crim­i­nal­i­ty as they ar­rest­ed 12 per­sons be­tween Thurs­day 27th and Sun­day 29th May. The suc­cess­ful ex­er­cis­es led to per­sons be­ing de­tained for ma­li­cious dam­age, a DUI and lar­ce­ny of TSTT ca­ble, pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing, and pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na. Four­teen per­sons were ar­rest­ed through­out all Di­vi­sions for var­i­ous drug re­lat­ed of­fences dur­ing the week­end.

Mean­while, of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion al­so con­duct­ed ex­er­cis­es and pa­trols which re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of sev­en per­sons. The sus­pects were ar­rest­ed for var­i­ous of­fences in­clud­ing en­quiries in­to pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion, wound­ing, wound­ing with in­tent, rob­bery, ma­li­cious dam­age and breach­ing a pro­tec­tion or­der.

The re­lent­less ef­fort to re­move il­le­gal firearms from our com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ued over the week­end as eight such weapons and var­i­ous quan­ti­ties of am­mu­ni­tion were seized, which re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of sev­en per­sons.

In the South­ern Di­vi­sion two men were ar­rest­ed dur­ing an ex­er­cise at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um on Sun­day. A 41-year-old Vista­bel­la man was found in pos­ses­sion of a Tau­rus pis­tol with 13 rounds of nine-mil­lime­tre am­mu­ni­tion. He was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch af­ter a tip off led to the search. The oth­er man was ar­rest­ed while at­tempt­ing to ob­struct the of­fi­cers in the ar­rest of the Vista­bel­la man. He was found to be in pos­ses­sion of $20,000 when of­fi­cers searched him. Six per­sons were al­so ar­rest­ed dur­ing a war­rant ex­er­cise which was con­duct­ed in the Area West of the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

An an­ti-crime ex­er­cise was car­ried out in the Mon Re­pos Po­lice dis­trict, South­ern Di­vi­sion be­tween 2pm and 4pm yes­ter­day. Based on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived the par­ty of of­fi­cers pro­ceed­ed to St An­drews Park West where they found a black bag con­tain­ing one black Glock 45 pis­tol con­tain­ing one mag­a­zine with ten rounds of nine-mil­lime­tre am­mu­ni­tion at an emp­ty lot to the back of an apart­ment build­ing.

While a strong po­lice pres­ence was ev­i­dent through­out the week­end, the TTPS did not on­ly fo­cus on drug blocks, pa­trols and road block ex­er­cis­es. Crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of the TTPS is build­ing strong com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions, Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ner­ship is in fact one of the strate­gic pri­or­i­ties of the TTPS. This strate­gic goal moved from the pages of a doc­u­ment to re­al­i­ty when of­fi­cers of the South­ern and North­ern Di­vi­sions or­gan­ised walk­a­bouts in their var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties on Sat­ur­day 28th May.

Of­fi­cers of the Ari­ma Po­lice dis­trict col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Waller­field Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, and sev­er­al fam­i­lies in­volved in farm­ing from Trac­tor­pool Road, Nicaragua Road and Chile Road, Waller­field who shared con­cerns and dis­cussed op­por­tu­ni­ties for a co­he­sive and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship be­tween the groups.

Of­fi­cers al­so ad­vised the farm­ers on ways to make them­selves ‘hard tar­gets’ to per­pe­tra­tors of crime. Of­fi­cers of the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion and the La Ro­maine Po­lice Post met with the La Ro­maine Com­mu­ni­ty Im­pact team mem­bers. The of­fi­cers fo­cused on the Bronx area, Tem­ple Street, Claude Street, and en­vi­rons. Mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ex­pressed their plea­sure with the ini­tia­tive and saw it as a pos­i­tive move by the TTPS and shared that they are look­ing for­ward to hav­ing a clos­er re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice.

A sim­i­lar ex­er­cise was al­so done in Bar­rack­pore, by of­fi­cers of the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion, Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID) and Bar­rack­pore Sta­tion Coun­cil. This ini­tia­tive was geared to­wards gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion about crimes in the re­spec­tive ar­eas and ed­u­cat­ing res­i­dents about per­son­al safe­ty whilst build­ing re­la­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ty. The res­i­dents were ap­pre­cia­tive of the ef­forts by the po­lice.

As fur­ther com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ments con­tin­ue through­out all Di­vi­sions, it is hoped that these ef­forts will lead to re­newed trust and greater con­fi­dence in the TTPS. Which in turn would fos­ter more re­port­ing of crimes, sim­i­lar to the tip off over the week­end that led to the ar­rest of a man and the re­moval of yet an­oth­er il­le­gal gun from the com­mu­ni­ty.