ACP Oswain Subero tipped to take over Tobago

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

ACP Os­wain Subero of the North­ern Di­vi­sion is tipped to take charge of To­ba­go fol­low­ing news of a lead­er­ship change in the To­ba­go TTPS Di­vi­sion.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Subero con­firmed the pos­si­ble re­as­sign­ment, al­though no of­fi­cial ap­point­ment has been made yet. Subero said a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial dis­cussed po­ten­tial changes and men­tioned his re­as­sign­ment last Thurs­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, he vowed to shake up crime in To­ba­go and re­store safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty on the is­land when he is ap­point­ed.

“I’m go­ing to give it my best shot; once I get the nod to re­al­ly go to To­ba­go, I will, and I don’t take suc­cess light­ly. The thing is, I don’t have a new plan. I will li­aise with Mr (Col­lis) Hazel to get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what his plans were and to build on them.

“We have doc­u­ments we use, which is the op­er­at­ing plan; we have a vi­o­lence re­duc­tion plan and cus­tomer care plan. I think the peo­ple we serve need to be treat­ed a par­tic­u­lar way, as well as our of­fi­cers. We could do some­thing, man; we could shake it up in To­ba­go. To­ba­go could be def­i­nite­ly the To­ba­go we want it to be.”

He plans to build on ex­ist­ing crime-fight­ing strate­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly fo­cus­ing on the vi­o­lent crime re­duc­tion plan.

Subero urged the com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port the po­lice for re­al re­sults.

He is gear­ing up to do what’s nec­es­sary to dri­ve fear in­to the hearts of crim­i­nals on the is­land.

“I too am ex­cit­ed hav­ing been to To­ba­go for the last few years, train­ing of­fi­cers con­sis­tent­ly.”

Subero is well-ac­quaint­ed with To­ba­go and its cul­ture, hav­ing co­or­di­nat­ed ma­jor events on the is­land for sev­er­al years.

“I don’t mind a chal­lenge, and I can­not guar­an­tee any­thing, but I can cer­tain­ly guar­an­tee that if the To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion is in sup­port of the po­lice, we def­i­nite­ly will see some re­sults.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands cur­rent ACP Col­lis Hazel and Snr Supt Rod­hill Kirk will be re­as­signed by Oc­to­ber. Hazel will head the Tac­ti­cal Unit and Kirk will be as­signed to the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

Chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, Cur­tis Williams, wel­comed Subero but cau­tioned him as well. “The cul­ture in To­ba­go is dif­fer­ent from Trinidad, and he will def­i­nite­ly have to do his ut­most best to get this thing in To­ba­go go­ing, es­pe­cial­ly peo­ple un­der his charge.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent cul­ture in To­ba­go, and he must un­der­stand that. But in go­ing for­ward, he must un­der­stand that we need re­sults and not so much talk. Less talk, more ac­tion.” Williams said changes in To­ba­go’s lead­er­ship were nec­es­sary, as there is now a need for a new ap­proach and strat­e­gy in the fight against crime.

“My mem­bers and the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty seek ac­tions … If this ac­tion could re­sult in mean­ing­ful changes to the com­mu­ni­ty, giv­ing us a sense of safe­ty. We ap­plaud the changes. We want to say thanks to ACP (Col­lis) Hazel and his as­sis­tant Snr Sup (Rod­hill) Kirk. I think they did their best, but times are chang­ing, so the strat­e­gy used must be dif­fer­ent.”