Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

As To­ba­go pre­pares to wel­come an es­ti­mat­ed 60,000 rev­ellers for next week’s Car­ni­val, an ad­di­tion­al 100 po­lice of­fi­cers have been de­ployed from Trinidad to bol­ster se­cu­ri­ty, with sup­port from the De­fence Force and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk con­firmed the de­ploy­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Ho­choy Charles Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex in Calder Hall.

He said In­ter-agency Task Force (IATF) and Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) of­fi­cers were al­ready on the is­land con­duct­ing op­er­a­tions, with some of­fi­cers ex­pect­ed to wear body cam­eras dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions.

With more than 50 events on the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, in­clud­ing sev­er­al post-Car­ni­val “cool-down” events, Kirk said the po­lice were prepar­ing for a busy pe­ri­od and urged rev­ellers to re­main alert and take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their safe­ty.

“The po­lice are in readi­ness for the event and we want the co-op­er­a­tion of the pub­lic,” he said.

Kirk said po­lice are mon­i­tor­ing ar­rivals, warn­ing that vis­i­tors in­tent on com­mit­ting crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty are on the po­lice’s radar.

“We have our in­tel­li­gence agency on the ground. We know who we are look­ing at. We are on top of that. We want to as­sure the pub­lic that we have it un­der con­trol.”

The se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket in­cludes tech­ni­cal sup­port from the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA), with a venue op­er­a­tions cen­tre at Shaw Park Com­plex, a com­mand post at First Cit­i­zens old car park in Scar­bor­ough, and watch tow­ers along the pa­rade route.

TEMA di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art said drones and oth­er tech­nolo­gies will be avail­able to help law en­force­ment.

Al­li­son Ram­baran-An­drews, man­ag­er of dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness at the TRHA, said rov­ing med­ical teams com­pris­ing nurs­es, physi­cians and emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians would pro­vide ad­di­tion­al sup­port and help en­sure prompt re­spons­es to emer­gen­cies.

The teams will pro­vide ini­tial treat­ment for con­di­tions in­clud­ing heat stress, fa­tigue, hy­po­gly­caemia, mi­nor cuts and bruis­es. Pa­tients re­quir­ing fur­ther at­ten­tion will be trans­port­ed to hos­pi­tal.

The Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions kick off to­day at 7 pm with Mon­archs of Mas at Car­ni­val City, Mar­ket Square, Scar­bor­ough, where ten fi­nal­ists will com­pete for the in­di­vid­ual crown.

To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals CEO Kern Cow­an said he is an­tic­i­pat­ing “an ex­plo­sion of cre­ativ­i­ty” and is urg­ing the pub­lic to come out and sup­port.

Cow­an al­so an­nounced that reg­is­tra­tion for the in­au­gur­al To­ba­go Road March was open and would close on Fri­day.

He iden­ti­fied three Road March zones, in­clud­ing Mar­ket Square near Bar­code and near Pen­te­costal Light and Life.

He said “qui­et zones” have al­so been im­ple­ment­ed to cater to hos­pi­tal pa­tients as well as res­i­dents.