Me­dia Am­bas­sador for the Po­lice Ser­vice, ASP Owie Rus­sell, says the TTPS has re­ceived a new batch of body cam­eras that will be used by of­fi­cers to en­sure that in­ci­dents in­volv­ing the po­lice and mem­bers of the pub­lic can be record­ed ac­cu­rate­ly.

ASP Rus­sell be­lieves this will as­sist in fos­ter­ing a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship be­tween the pub­lic and po­lice.

“The Com­mis­sion­er has pro­cured ad­di­tion­al body-worn cam­eras that are more ap­pro­pri­ate for the rigours of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the rigours of polic­ing it­self,” ASP Rus­sell re­vealed. “We hope to de­ploy 1,000 ad­di­tion­al body-worn cam­eras, to build that trust and con­fi­dence.”

He says not on­ly will the use of body cam­eras pro­tect po­lice of­fi­cers; they al­so will in­flu­ence mem­bers of the pub­lic to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their own be­hav­iour when in­ter­act­ing with the po­lice.

“Hav­ing that cam­era there would al­so cause cit­i­zens to be­have in a par­tic­u­lar way,” he not­ed, “be­cause they would recog­nise that their be­hav­iour is al­so be­ing filmed, and they, too, can be called in­to ques­tion.”

The TTPS spokesman point­ed to many of the vi­ral videos in so­cial me­dia show­cas­ing episodes of neg­a­tive po­lice in­ter­ac­tion with the pub­lic.

“You on­ly see the in­ter­ac­tion when it gets sour,” he ob­served. “You didn’t see what tran­spired be­fore that had the im­pact and en­cour­aged the in­ter­ac­tion to de­te­ri­o­rate to what you see in the videos.”

ASP Rus­sell said the Po­lice Ser­vice would be strength­en­ing and in­creas­ing its com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment ini­tia­tives, as it works as­sid­u­ous­ly to re­build the pub­lic’s trust and con­fi­dence in the in­sti­tu­tion.