DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) has is­sued a pub­lic plea to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, seek­ing the im­me­di­ate re­turn of 35 Port-of-Spain City Po­lice of­fi­cers who were trans­ferred to an undis­closed lo­ca­tion in south Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to DO­MA, the trans­fer, ini­tial­ly de­scribed as a tem­po­rary mea­sure, was ex­tend­ed, leav­ing the cap­i­tal city with­out crit­i­cal po­lice re­sources.

“We have been re­li­ably in­formed that this trans­fer from City Po­lice head­quar­ters was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to be a tem­po­rary mea­sure but has per­sist­ed for more than sev­er­al months with the like­li­hood that the of­fi­cers will be away from city du­ties through the month of De­cem­ber,” the re­lease said.

DO­MA said se­nior high-rank­ing of­fi­cials at the min­istry and po­lice head­quar­ters have been ad­vised of this sit­u­a­tion on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions; how­ev­er, promis­es to ad­dress the is­sue have not ma­te­ri­alised.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the Cen­tral Busi­ness Po­lice Unit and Port-of-Spain CID have at­tempt­ed to cov­er the gap. How­ev­er, DO­MA not­ed that these units are al­ready stretched thin by their ex­ist­ing de­mands and can­not ful­ly com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the city po­lice of­fi­cers.

“Vig­i­lance on city streets dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son needs no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in the midst of the start of the cruise ship sea­son.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has giv­en the as­sur­ance that the of­fi­cers will re­turn to the cap­i­tal as re­quest­ed. How­ev­er, no time frame was giv­en.

“Whilst the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice does not fall un­der the di­rect ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol/ su­per­vi­sion of the TTPS, I have held dis­cus­sions with the ACP of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice De­part­ment and yes­ter­day gave in­struc­tions that the of­fi­cers be re­turned to the Port-of-Spain City.”

Ef­forts to reach Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi as well as Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne were un­suc­cess­ful.