RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With crime be­ing a num­ber one is­sue fac­ing the coun­try, one of the PNM’s youngest Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment can­di­dates, Jer­ron Mo­hammed, says on­go­ing po­lice train­ing is ben­e­fi­cial in re­duc­ing this coun­try’s crime scourge.

Mo­hammed, aged 23, who is cam­paign­ing for the Rio Claro South elec­toral seat, said it is tough cam­paign­ing in a UNC strong­hold but he is con­fi­dent that youths like him­self will vote on is­sues.

Mo­hammed is em­ployed at the T&T Po­lice Acad­e­my as a busi­ness op­er­a­tions as­sis­tant.

He be­lieves his train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence give him an edge over oth­er can­di­dates.

“We have white col­lar crime, gang-re­lat­ed, or­gan­ised crime, do­mes­tic crime and crimes of pas­sion. Each as­pect re­quires a dif­fer­ent ap­proach but I can tell you that we are de­vel­op­ing plans to com­bat this,” he ex­plained.

Mo­hammed said he works at the Ad­vanced Pro­grammes Unit, which is re­spon­si­ble for fa­cil­i­tat­ing train­ing for of­fi­cers who are al­ready in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

“I see of­fi­cers from Con­sta­ble to First Di­vi­sion be­ing trained week­ly by the thou­sands on com­bat­ing crime, adapt­ing new mea­sures to treat crime, re­act­ing to crime. In the acad­e­my, there is a de­part­ment for re­search and de­vel­op­ment. They are al­ways do­ing re­search and the feed­back that de­vel­ops these cours­es comes from the field, Mo­hammed said.

He not­ed that crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty are al­ways evolv­ing and “so we have to con­tin­ue do­ing the re­search and train­ing,” he added.

Mo­hammed said as a young busi­ness own­er he want­ed to make a dif­fer­ence.

“Based on re­spons­es from my on­go­ing walks, I have ob­served the need for ur­gent at­ten­tion to in­fra­struc­tur­al re­pairs. There is al­so a high lev­el of un­em­ploy­ment among us. I want to do bet­ter for my com­mu­ni­ty,” Mo­hammed said. He said he hoped to pro­vide a voice for youths.

Mean­while, Mo­hammed’s op­po­nent, David Law, who is cam­paign­ing for the UNC, agreed that crime was a ma­jor is­sue. He said there had been sev­er­al mur­ders and many res­i­dents were fear­ful of crime.

“Right now, mu­nic­i­pal po­lice are deal­ing with tick­ets and there are oth­er ar­eas where mu­nic­i­pal po­lice are need­ed. We have spo­ken about the is­sue of crime in the town meet­ings,” he added.

Law added: “We need to deep­en that al­liance with reg­u­lar and mu­nic­i­pal po­lice.”

He said the UNC planned to rein­tro­duce com­mu­ni­ty com­fort pa­trols and hire 1,000 mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers.

“These of­fi­cers will work with chil­dren in the na­tion’s schools to elim­i­nate stu­dent delin­quen­cy and vi­o­lence.”

Law al­so said the UNC will in­crease le­gal gun ac­cess. He said mu­nic­i­pal po­lice need­ed to crack down on il­le­gal dump­ing as this has ham­pered eco-tourism op­por­tu­ni­ties in the area.