Trinidad: Cops caught moon­light­ing as ‘escorts’ with patrol vehicles after fete

(Trinidad Guardian) Po­lice of­fi­cers moon­light­ing as “es­corts” and us­ing of­fi­cial ve­hi­cles to trans­port peo­ple from the pop­u­lar Soa­ka fete at O2 Park have come un­der fire from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Gary Grif­fith. The of­fi­cers have been ac­cused of “gala­vant­i­ng” with of­fi­cial po­lice ve­hi­cles and help­ing to con­tribute to the huge traf­fic jam along the West­ern Main Road yes­ter­day morn­ing, while some of their col­leagues were de­ployed to en­sure a smooth flow as mo­torists made their way along the route.

Grif­fith was left fum­ing when he dis­cov­ered what the of­fi­cers were do­ing.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said, “I want to ask the pub­lic, do not pay po­lice of­fi­cers any­thing on the side as a per­son­al job to be es­cort­ed, if it is not done through the prop­er sys­tem through the po­lice sta­tion. What is hap­pen­ing with that is it’s caus­ing fur­ther traf­fic con­ges­tion. It is un­eth­i­cal and al­so I am not able to utilise my po­lice of­fi­cers and ve­hi­cles be­cause they are there gala­vant­i­ng and do­ing per­son­al jobs.”

Grif­fith said five po­lice ve­hi­cles were be­ing used to es­cort peo­ple af­ter the fete. He said the of­fi­cers would face dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion.

“I’m putting my foot down on the sit­u­a­tion. I want my po­lice of­fi­cers and the ve­hi­cles to do polic­ing, they sup­posed to be out there to pro­tect and serve not to be us­ing the ve­hi­cles and the as­sets of the State for their per­son­al use,” the top cop said.

The CoP said an op­er­a­tion had been set up in prepa­ra­tion for the pop­u­lar fete from 11 pm on Sat­ur­day, which had for many years seen ma­jor traf­fic con­ges­tion in Care­nage in its af­ter­math.

“The fete it­self was in­ci­dent free. This is the third phase, what is hap­pen­ing now is what has been hap­pen­ing for years, we have per­sons when they go to Ch­aguara­mas for events, they spend hours in traf­fic con­ges­tion. So this is not a stop and frisk, this here is to en­sure that the Po­lice Ser­vice, we are able to as­sist to get as many peo­ple out as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” said the com­mis­sion­er, who said sim­i­lar op­er­a­tions will be put in place for ma­jor events through­out the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The com­mis­sion­er said de­spite many peo­ple ap­pear­ing drunk dur­ing the fete, there were not many in­stances of DUIs as he recog­nised many pa­trons opt­ed to hire max­is for the event.

How­ev­er, he said mea­sures are be­ing put in place to ad­dress er­rant po­lice of­fi­cers.

“What I’m do­ing is putting sys­tems in place to mea­sure per­for­mance, make all po­lice of­fi­cers ac­count­able so we are able to mon­i­tor through GPS track­ing if po­lice are not on pa­trol (or) if they are not do­ing what is re­quired,” said Grif­fith.