This was revealed by Commissioner of Police Michael Matthews during a recent airing of the Honestly Speaking radio programme.

He said the RVIPF is currently blind to some of the offences being committed in the territory and the strategic placement of CCTV cameras in various areas will be part of that solution.

“I came back on duty on January 2 and the first thing I did was to send a message to the project manager to say, ‘where are we?’. I want to know that in 2020 we are going to see cameras going on poles, and I was given a lot of reassurances that in the coming weeks we are going to start to see these arrive in the territory and start to be fitted,” Commissioner Matthews stated.

He added: “I’m desperately pushing hard still, and I know the Premier (Andrew Fahie) himself personally is very concerned about the time it is taking to fully restore CCTV to the territory.”

Delays due to CDB process

Explaining why the process reinstating the CCTV cameras took longer than expected after they were destroyed during the September 2017 hurricanes, Matthews said: “It certainly is in the budget and it has been budgeted for, but there have been delays around the funding mechanism because this comes under the Caribbean Development Loan Scheme, so it is a very expensive thing to install across the territory.”

Portable cameras a prospect also

Commissioner Matthews further stated that the RVIPF is also exploring other additional tools to enforce the traffic laws, which will coexist with the physical presence of police officers.

“The other variation of it is that there are cameras available now that can actually photograph a scooter and a rider, and give on the photograph the location and speed it was doing at the time. So we are also looking at that technology to be setup, and that can be set up and taken down, we can use that around the territory.”