Communities will not be Deprived of Police During Cricket World Cup

Chair of the Security Committee for the Jamaica Local Organising Committee (LOC), Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Owen Ellington is assuring troubled communities that they will not be deprived of normal police presence during the staging of the ICC Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2007, which begins next month.
“We have built up the capacity over the last three years to be able to dedicate to the tournament without compromising security elsewhere,”Mr. Ellington told JIS News in an interview.
Elaborating, he said the Committee had rationalized the deployment of security personnel in such a way as to ensure that there is still a visible presence of lawmen in communities.
“We are not just solely focused on tournament security. We are also concerned about community safety,” he said. “We have territorial police deployment and members will remain in their areas to dispense policing activities,” ACP Ellington added.
This is in addition to the centralized contingents of police personnel, such as the mobile reserves, special anti-crime task force, motorized patrol division and traffic headquarters, many of whose members will be deployed at the match venues, around the match venues and around official hotels doing various things in support of tournament security.
“We will have extraordinary deployment in an around match venues and all the other areas where the teams will visit or take part in any ceremony. We will also have extraordinary deployment on critical routes and other key points and installations,” he informed.
As for the role of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), ACP Ellington said the army had a defined function in terms of assisting with tournament security but would not necessarily have an overt presence on the nation’s streets.
“There are key points that they can assist us in terms of protection arrangements and should it come to that, we have contingencies in place to integrate JDF support into aspects of street policing,” he disclosed.
Mr. Ellington also disclosed that there is a committee in place to deal with any crisis that may occur. “There are several levels – there is the policy level and there is the senior strategic command level – which will deal with national situations,” he explained.
“There is also a level below that, which deals with venue specific operations, incident and crisis management. All of those people have been trained, they have been tested in a number of scenarios and I think we are all ready to go,” ACP Ellington said.
Under the Yellow Package, Jamaica will host four warm-up matches, the opening ceremony at the Trelawny Multipurpose Stadium, six group stage matches, and a semi-final match at Sabina Park.