Buoyed by the success of new anti-crime measures, acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams has set new targets for his organisation with an aim to reduce the number of serious criminal offences to 11,000 for the year. That is 50 per cent fewer than recorded six years ago. Williams was speaking at 50th anniversary celebrations of the Retired Police Officers Association at the First Division Officers Mess, Police Administration Building, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday.
He says the country was enjoying a “fantastic reduction” in serious crimes. “When you look at the numbers, I am extremely proud of the T&T Police Service. “Using the basic principle that the presence of police can act as a major deterrent to crime, what we have seen flowing from that is for 2013 and 2014 there was a fantastic drop in serious crimes in T&T.
“From 1985 there were 13,979 serious crimes recorded and a continuous increase to an all-time high in 2009, the numbers crashed, 22,162 was the total for 2009, 13,146 in 2013 and down to 12,055 in 2014. “We’re running at 17 per cent reduction over last year’s figure which means that if we continue at the rate we're going we should take it down anywhere to 11,000.” He said this did not happen by accident but by an entire change in the approach to policing.
In January, Williams had also set a target for his officers to recover 800 illegal firearms from the streets saying it was the number one weapon of choice in homicides. Williams said he had a very open-door policy in relation to receiving suggestions and recommendations from the general public. He made a call to the batch of 1965 officers to make themselves available to him as their accumulated years of experience and expertise can improve the organisation in moving the police service forward.
He said the A,B,C and D squads of 1965 had tremendous available resources, a wealth of experience and expertise that should not go to waste as the T&T Police service sought to make T&T a model society. Williams said members of the police service had set themselves a vision to make every place in T&T safe.
He said it was a tall order, some people felt that it was utopian, but society was demanding an environment that was safe and secure. Williams said that the Police Service cannot say the height had been set to make every place in T&T safe was too high, police officers just had to work towards that on a daily basis. Also present at the ceremony were Assistant Commissioner of Police Christopher Lewis and former commissioner of police Everald Snaggs.