Regulations are being put in place to ensure the National Security Operations Centre (NSOC) does not become another Special Anti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt). So said Police Service Commission chairman Prof Ramesh Deosaran during a tour of NSOC at Knowsley, Port-of-Spain, yesterday. “Questions will have to be worked out in terms of the regulatory framework into which this National Operations Centre will operate and we do not want to have similar concerns as we have had with Sautt.
“This is a new venture. It is very welcome, in our view. It looks very promising for the security and public safety of the country,” he added Deosaran said NSOC was very sophisticated in terms of technology and manpower capabilites and could greatly assist in the work of the Police Service. Referring to the attempted coup of July 1990, Deosaran said it was obvious there were several weaknesses in the country’s security agencies.
“We believe that this National Operations Centre is strategically poised to heal those breaches at present and in the future. “We believe our security services could be vastly improved by this centre,” Deosaran said. He said the strategic data collected by NSOC would likely to be passed on to the commission to help improve its appraisal exercises on the executive of the Police Service. Director of the National Operations Centre, Commander Garvin Heerah, said inter-agency collaborations were necessary to ensure there was strategic decision-making, maximisation of assets and utilisation of all agencies.