In keeping with the mission to establish an evidence-based Police Service, the organisation will continue to undertake experiments next year to ensure crime prevention and crime control, says acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams.
He was speaking at the first day of the UTT’s two-day symposium, titled Breaking Boundaries: Exploring Crime and Security in the 21st-century, at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.
Williams, who delivered the feature address, presented the findings of a 2013 experiment conducted by the Police Service, titled Using GPS tracking to reduce homicides and shootings in T&T: A ramdomised trial.
The time-span for the experiment was between 2009 to 2013.
“In 2016 we have to continue the effort. I presented on a 2013 experiment but in 2016 we have to continue. The Police Service has to find ways and means of effectively impacting violent crimes in our country.” Williams said. While not speaking about the details of next year’s experiment he said it was important to conduct such initiative as that would enable the organisation to be modern.
Following the 2013 experiment Williams and his organisation were praised by Prof Lawerence Sherman, director of the Institute of Criminologyat the University of Cambridge who had said:
“Several police agencies in early 2015 are poised on the brink of a wide-ranging effort to use best evidence for changing the way police resources are used.
“In the lead is T&T which completely reshaped its policing strategy, as measured by GPS in 2014 to focus on homicide hot-spots.”
In speaking about the 2013 test, Williams said that entailed patrolling hot spots areas throughout the country using GPS in police vehicles and analysing the data.
“Part of the strategic objective of the Police Service was shaped from our strategic plan of 2014 to 2016. It was about establishing an evidence-based policing culture.
“It is centred about doing research, finding out what will work in Trinidad and what is not working in the context of crime prevention and crime control and it is all geared to address the number one issue we all have, violent crimes, and it shows up in the form of murders, shootings and woundings,” Williams said. He added that GPS was used as a management tool to create vital information which included improved crime plotting and which was historically based on an officer reports and addresses. “To accurately identify crime hot spots, crimes must be accurately plotted,” Williams added.
On how could GPS continue to be used effectively in 2016 to combat crime. Williams said the 2013 experiment taught the Police Service many lessons.
“We did not have the capacity to take the load off the effort that we were pursuing. The experiment moved us from just a few GPS... in excess of 900 GPS... and now we are in excess of 1,400 GPS units in patrol vehicles.
“All our patrol vehicles, all our marked vehicles... we have GPS tracking units so our experience in 2013 taught us that we have to build capacity and widen our network.
“We have to spread it. We cannot be limited to one central location. We have to get more loggers to link up and in those circumstances we have done that in 2014 and we are now seeing the Police Service in a better position of tracking our vehicles and patrols in all the hot spot locations,” Williams said.
Saying that prevention was a critical component, Williams said tracking was critical because it also ensured that police officers were supposed to be where they were designated to be.
He added: “We know for a fact ‘hot time is night time’ and we would know for a fact whether police officers are patrolling in night time and we know the location where there is the likelihood of violent crimes because over time we have seen the violent crimes are featured and so therefore it is critical that we are in a location to verify that and we verify it by the GPS and geofencing the location which allow us to know when the officers enter the location, how much time is spent and we also track the results out of crime. “As an organisation the Police Service has to confront that.
The best way to confront that is by using research evidence and that is why we look at in some instances experiments and quasar experiments.”
The 2013 experiment also found that between 6 pm and 2 am was the time when most crimes occurred.