TT cops to curb crime

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) today said it is confident that its new “Police in the 21st century” strategy will result in a reduction in criminal activity on the island.
“We will not be going into too much detail, but it is a modern contemporary style of policing and it uses technology, it used intelligence led policing to get certain information that will be used to suppress and stay on top of those incidents,” police spokesman Sergeant Wayne Mystar told the daily news conference.
“It also includes a deployment model where we deploy police officers in strategic areas as opposed to having them at the police station where the person (victim) has to come to the police station. We will already have the persons already deployed…so that we will be able to respond timely.
“We are fully confident that this initiative will assist in the reduction of crime,” said Mystar.
With only three days into the New Year, police confirmed there have already been four murders and Mystar told reporters that TTPS is working at improving upon the detection rate.
“As we said before it appears that crime is on the rise but based on our statistics there has been a decrease. Our crime plan initiative, soon after the State of Emergency (that ended on December 5, last year) we continue to be vigilant, we continue our exercises on a regular basis, our detection rate has gone up based on the last set of events we had over the Christmas season.”
He said that people have been arrested in six of the eight murders. Last year 354 people wdere murdered in Trinidad and Tobago.
“Crime rates are trending down. Our homicide rate for 2011 was down about 27 to 28 per cent when compared to last year and that’s very encouraging. “It is still very discouraging that 354 people have been murdered in this country and unacceptably high,” Deputy Commissioner Jack Ewatski, told a local newspaper Tuesday.
Prior to her departure on a 10-day official visit to India, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced her administration’s commitment to deal with crime and corruption in 2012.
 “Our assault on crime and criminals, guns and drugs will continue this year in a relentless fashion.The criminals must not be allowed to instil fear in our neighbourhoods. And they will definitely not be allowed to usher in a reign of terror in our country.
“ We will work diligently to keep crime under control and we will continue to rely on the security forces to do their job,” she said, adding that she “never expected that gang warfare, drugs and the threat of instability to our country would force me to call a State of Emergency.”
She said her administration had succeeded in reducing crime and it would be working “with communities to take back their neighbourhoods from criminal activity in the coming year.
“Additionally, the security forces have defined targets for reduction of crime and increases in detection rates which they must meet,” she said.  (CMC)