Tobago’s security officials have ramped up their stop-and-search exercises and are yielding results since the Government’s announcement of a State of Emergency across the nation.
This, according to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Oswain Subero.
The Tobago House of Assembly held a security stakeholder meeting on Thursday. ACP Subero said the presence of firearms in Tobago is a major concern for security officials. He informed that a specific strategy has been implemented by the Tobago Division to address this.
“We have been able to detain persons, and we’ve been able to charge persons and we’ve been able to recover the number one thing that we wanted: firearms. Only on the last day of the year, we recovered two firearms. So it is our drive in 2025 to remove as many firearms as possible off the island of Tobago.”
ACP Subero noted that officers of the Tourism-Oriented Policing Unit have also been enlightened on considerations to be given to tourists as the officers conduct their exercises.
“We intend to bring in some training so that younger officers will have a better idea of how to interact with the tourists and to even make it easier for communication. We have the barcode system that we use when the tourists come so they just take a picture and all the information they need for the island is on it, but we have been seeing some successes, some we cannot discuss here, and we look forward to Parliament making a decision on how long the State of Emergency will be.”