Social media surveillance coming

In 2020 the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will cre­ate a cen­tre with the ca­pac­i­ty to mon­i­tor and analyse so­cial me­dia ac­tiv­i­ty via the use of sur­veil­lance sys­tems, and the TTPS will al­so get the Ar­moured Per­son­nel Car­ri­ers which Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith had ad­vo­cat­ed since he was the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship regime.

This and oth­er in­for­ma­tion on TTPS’ plans for 2020 are con­tained in the 2020 Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment plan (PSIP) and De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

These re­ports were part of 2020 Bud­get doc­u­ments laid in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day.

The TTPS re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.6B in the 2020 Bud­get – an in­crease from $2.2b in 2019.

Po­lice of­fi­cers said yes­ter­day such an ini­tia­tive like a so­cial me­dia analy­sis cen­tre has the po­ten­tial to great­ly as­sist TTPS sys­tems, pro­vid­ing ma­te­r­i­al on a wide range of is­sues from in­ci­dents of crime and ter­ror­ism to cross bor­der is­sues con­tribut­ing to crime.

In 2020 TTPS will be ex­pand­ing its fleet from 1,668 to 1,900 ve­hi­cles.

The PSIP stat­ed, “This in­creased mo­bil­i­ty will im­prove TTPS’ ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness by im­prov­ing the lev­el of ser­vice pro­vid­ed to cit­i­zens, in­creased po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty na­tion­wide and im­proved op­er­a­tional ca­pa­bil­i­ty through­out the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

“An al­lo­ca­tion of $30 mil­lion will as­sist TTPS in pur­chas­ing the fol­low­ing types of ve­hi­cles: Sport Util­i­ty Sedan, Ar­moured Per­son­nel Car­ri­er (APC), and Sport Util­i­ty Ve­hi­cle (SUV).

Grif­fith had ad­vo­cat­ed the use of APCs since 2014 when he was the PP Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter. APCs are built to trans­port pro­tec­tive ser­vices/troops and are geared for self-de­fence and to pro­tect pas­sen­gers from small-arms fire or shrap­nel.