Police officers have been trained and are being trained in how to deal with members of the public and communities as the Barbados Police Service looks to deploy more resources in districts.
That is according to Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce who was speaking in the Well of the House of Assembly yesterday as Parliament debated The Appropriation Bill, 2025. He said several steps were being taken to make Barbadians feel safe and secure.
“So whether it is in the business community, whether it is in the school environment, wherever these persons are, we train our officers and we train them also when it comes to interacting and engaging members of the public. [We] look at how our resources are deployed and whether or not each and every department is pulling the way we asked them to pull.
“One glaring example which we engage to deal with members of the public . . . is to relook the way we deploy members of the Barbados Police Service Band. So the band . . . is one of the areas which we employ to get members into the community, have that face-to-face
contact, engagement, and bring that level of camaraderie to members of the public and reassurance where the service is delivered,” Boyce stated.
Police have been heavily engaging in the problem areas of Haynesville, St James; Silver Hill and Silver Sands in Christ Church; The Pine and Deacons in St Michael, the Commissioner said, adding there were other areas where the presence of the police need to be felt.
“It has been a whole roll-out of holding the hands of persons in these communities and reassuring them that we are their friends. There are times when we have to engage and probably arrest someone, but our approach . . . would be one of doing it in a humane manner so that members of the public would not be our enemies, but would be our brothers and sisters for one common purpose – that is having persons settled in their homes,” he said.
(AC)
