Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice chase in El So­cor­ro yes­ter­day end­ed with the ar­rest of two sus­pects.

Po­lice said that of­fi­cers of the Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol (ERP) were dri­ving on Bound­ary Road, around 1 pm when they no­ticed a sil­ver Nis­san Ti­i­da speed­ing out of a near­by side street.

The of­fi­cers be­came sus­pi­cious and fol­lowed the car while try­ing to stop the dri­ver.

The car drove on­to the east­bound lane of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way near the walkover but crashed on the shoul­der of the road.

Po­lice said the dri­ver ran out of the car and shot at of­fi­cers, as a sec­ond man, who was sit­ting in the front pas­sen­ger-side seat al­so ran off.

How­ev­er, po­lice caught up to the dri­ver and ar­rest­ed him.

The pas­sen­ger was caught by a team of of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF), near a fast food restau­rant a short dis­tance away.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a walk­a­bout in down­town Port-of-Spain, hours lat­er, DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin said the ar­rest of both men was a tes­ta­ment to the ef­fec­tive­ness of a height­ened po­lice pres­ence. He said sim­i­lar pa­trols would be ini­ti­at­ed na­tion­wide as the State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­mains in ef­fect.

He said while cit­i­zens could be as­sured of faster re­sponse times as a re­sult of the height­ened ex­er­cis­es, crim­i­nals should re­think their ac­tiv­i­ties.

“The fact that we are out­side brings to bear that at any giv­en time you can see the po­lice and when crim­i­nals de­cide they want to do their own thing, at least the po­lice are there to spoil their fun in the city or any com­mu­ni­ty we are pa­trolling.

“You’ll see more ro­bust pa­trols, where po­lice will be deal­ing with ma­jor and mi­nor crimes.

“We al­so want law-abid­ing per­sons to know you can feel safe in the cities or any­where else be­cause the po­lice will be there. For those in­tent on break­ing the law, we will be on their case and we will bring them to jus­tice as we re­store law and or­der.”

Ben­jamin was flanked by of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion in­clud­ing from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion and the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice as they spoke with busi­ness­peo­ple, road­side ven­dors and passers-by in a bid to of­fer com­fort through their pres­ence.

ACP Spe­cialised Sup­port Bri­an Sood­een, who al­so took part in the walk­a­bout, said of­fi­cers from the ca­nine unit would be de­ployed to as­sist of­fi­cers in tar­get­ed search­es for guns and drugs as he stressed that every unit of the po­lice ser­vice was be­ing called up­on to help in crime­fight­ing.

Sood­een, who al­so has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty over the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Unit, called on peo­ple vis­it­ing so­cial events in the lead-up to Car­ni­val to be mind­ful of their al­co­hol in­take as of­fi­cers would be on hand to per­form breathal­yser tests on the road and even at events.

“We of­fer vol­un­tary test­ing at the fetes to en­sure peo­ple are sober enough to dri­ve ve­hi­cles. Be safe on the road not just for your­self but oth­er dri­vers.”