An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Gold Com­man­der for Car­ni­val 2025, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), Crime, Richard Smith, yes­ter­day added his voice to of­fi­cials say­ing this year’s cel­e­bra­tions had been one of the safest ever.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, he said, “Eight out of the ten di­vi­sions in T&T have re­port­ed no se­ri­ous in­ci­dents for Car­ni­val 2025.”

Com­mend­ing sec­tion heads and se­nior of­fi­cers of all law en­force­ment agen­cies for as­sist­ing in help­ing to make it safe – he pro­duced box­es filled with knives, icepicks, shanks, scis­sors, combs, and glass bot­tles, in­clud­ing liquor and per­fumes, that had been con­fis­cat­ed from peo­ple en­ter­ing the cap­i­tal city.

Al­so in­clud­ed among the con­tra­band was a cam­ou­flage wa­ter pack and a vest; along with an as­sort­ment of mar­i­jua­na in bot­tles and pack­ets. He said of­fi­cers had been hard at work from as ear­ly as 1 am on Mon­day, car­ry­ing out search­es of peo­ple and ve­hi­cles en­ter­ing Port-of-Spain.

Mak­ing no apolo­gies for the wreck­ing that was done on the two days, in which a to­tal of 280 ve­hi­cles were towed in Port-of-Spain, Smith ex­plained that even though mes­sages were com­mu­ni­cat­ed via so­cial me­dia and ad­ver­tise­ments, “some per­sons de­cid­ed to park along the routes as well as in re­strict­ed ar­eas, so these ve­hi­cles were wrecked be­cause we had to en­sure we had clear­ance for bands to pass through.”

Mean­while, a to­tal of four trucks were pulled off the road for non-com­pli­ance be­tween Car­ni­val Sun­day and Tues­day.

He said al­though all ap­pli­cants were grant­ed per­mits and giv­en a list of the re­stric­tions, some own­ers/op­er­a­tors of mu­sic trucks had ex­ceed­ed the height re­quire­ments, which led to one truck pulling down over­head lines on Sun­day at South Quay.

Re­gard­ing of­fi­cers’ at­ten­dance, Smith said of­fi­cers had been ros­tered to work through­out the sea­son, which in­clud­ed fetes, par­ties, and the four days of rev­el­ry – whilst al­so en­forc­ing the State of Emer­gency.

Asked to re­spond to claims that on­ly 41 of the 83 ros­tered shift of po­lice of­fi­cers for the Wood­brook area had re­port­ed for work dur­ing the two days – and that a snail had been found in one of the meals pro­vid­ed to of­fi­cers – the ex­ec­u­tive ap­peared sur­prised at first.

Smith lat­er said they were in the midst of com­pil­ing the at­ten­dance record of all of­fi­cers in­clud­ing se­niors, “so that was still on­go­ing.”

Asked if they had been forced to pull of­fi­cers from dif­fer­ent di­vi­sions and sec­tions to as­sist in ar­eas where short­ages were re­port­ed, in­clud­ing Port-of-Spain, he said, “Yes, we did that this year.”

He said the cap­i­tal re­quired the largest man­pow­er and as such, they were al­ways hav­ing to aug­ment this sup­ply with of­fi­cers from out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion.