An­na-Lisa Paul

In an ef­fort to make it dif­fi­cult for crim­i­nals mas­querad­ing as po­lice of­fi­cers to en­gage in “il­le­git­i­mate” ac­tiv­i­ties that could end up hurt­ing the pub­lic, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob says they are con­sid­er­ing re­duc­ing how and when op­er­a­tional uni­forms are to be worn.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from re­porters dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Ja­cob ad­mit­ted they had ob­served a trend with­in re­cent weeks where crim­i­nals were don­ning cloth­ing and uni­forms re­sem­bling that of the TTPS and car­ry­ing out road­blocks and even com­mit­ting mur­ders.

In­di­cat­ing the pub­lic would see a re­turn of the blue and grey uni­form dur­ing spe­cial ex­er­cis­es, which will be one way to re­as­sure the pub­lic of an of­fi­cer’s le­git­i­ma­cy, Ja­cob said this wor­ry­ing trend first emerged last No­vem­ber. And de­spite ar­rests and charges be­ing brought against sev­er­al per­sons, he said it ap­pears to have sur­faced once again.

Ja­cob ad­vised the pub­lic to look for ad­di­tion­al in­di­ca­tors such as marked po­lice ve­hi­cles and badges promi­nent­ly dis­played around of­fi­cers’ necks.

He said a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign is al­so be­ing planned to sen­si­tise peo­ple on what to look for.

“We are go­ing to in­crease the use of the blue and grey that the po­lice used in years gone by and cut down as much as pos­si­ble, po­lice of­fi­cers us­ing what we call the op­er­a­tional blue uni­form which we be­lieve is what is be­ing done,” he said.

Mean­while, act­ing Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Wen­dell Williams, said mo­torists whose ve­hic­u­lar tints are ex­ces­sive­ly dark would at­tract more at­ten­tion from the TTPS in the com­ing weeks.

Warn­ing that these ve­hi­cles could even be re­ferred to as “sus­pect,” he said this was part of the ef­fort to re­duce crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.