Trinidad: Cops able to keep Carnival 2019 safe

(Trinidad Guardian) Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day laud­ed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice for their ef­forts for Car­ni­val, say­ing they achieved an ap­prox­i­mate­ly 95 per cent of­fi­cer turnout which con­tributed to this year’s safe Car­ni­val.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter vis­it­ing the So­cadrome at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo, yes­ter­day, Young said: “(We’ve had) an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of of­fi­cers out. We’ve had 94 to 95 per cent yes­ter­day (Mon­day) out on the job. We ex­pect more to­day (yes­ter­day) and I re­al­ly want to com­mend the men and women.”

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, who was al­so at the So­cadrome venue, al­so said the po­lice’s drones, which were put in­to ac­tion for the cel­e­bra­tions, had been fruit­ful.

“It has turned night in­to day, we can see every­thing. It has giv­en cov­er­age in re­al time. Like­wise, with the body cams and the dash­board cams on the emer­gency re­sponse pa­trol ve­hi­cles… the use of tech­nol­o­gy is the way to go,” Grif­fith said, adding they were able to use this re­al-time sur­veil­lance of the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties to re­spond to in­ci­dents.

Ear­li­er at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Grif­fith had ad­mit­ted there were dis­tur­bances dur­ing the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties but said they were not se­ri­ous in­ci­dents.

“There have been very few in­ci­dents, very mi­nor in com­par­i­son to Car­ni­vals in the years gone by,” Grif­fith told re­porters.

More im­por­tant­ly, he said, was that the per­cep­tion and fear of crime in the coun­try was sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.

Young said the ex­pe­ri­ence of such a safe Car­ni­val took months of plan­ning by the var­i­ous arms of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“It’s been a lot of plan­ning go­ing on…our trav­el ad­vi­sories have not been af­fect­ed. That’s a great stamp of con­fi­dence from all of the var­i­ous al­ly coun­tries who do trav­el ad­vi­sories on Trinidad. I’d just like to com­mend every­body on a job well done,” Young said.

For a safe Car­ni­val, Grif­fith thanked both the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and the cit­i­zens of T&T.

“You have proven to be very ma­ture, very re­spon­si­ble, they ad­here to all the dif­fer­ent things. It shows that we are a dis­ci­plined so­ci­ety. So all arms of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cers and all cit­i­zens of this coun­try, I wish to say that we are all one big famalay­lay­lay­lay­lay­lay­lay,” Grif­fith said.

On Fri­day, how­ev­er, Grif­fith, who had urged all of­fi­cers to turn out for du­ty, will be meet­ing with of­fi­cers who were ab­sent dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions.