Relevance of Sky Watch

While Port-of-Spain needs to deal speedily with inner city crime and should examine systems already successfully in use in other major cities, nonetheless this newspaper has reservations about the effectiveness of the recently introduced anti-crime Sky Watch unit at its Independence Square location between Frederick Street and Broadway. In turn, where this is feasible, equipment being offered to the Government, although it is understandably anxious to contain and eventually bring down existing crime levels, should nonetheless be subject to on the spot testing, where feasible, to determine its suitability. Failing this, a panel should examine written material on, as well as videos of, the equipment in use and available independent studies.

Already, the Sky Watch unit, acquired at a cost of $1 million, and the first of three which Government is seemingly contracted to purchase, reportedly has developed technical problems. These have since been corrected. The principal feature of the Sky Watch is that a glass enclosed area in which police officers will be housed can be elevated from ground level to a height of 24 feet to allow the officers what should be a panoramic view of the city. Marketing information re Sky Watch which stressed that the equipment was in use worldwide by US military forces (especially the US Third Army in Kuwait and Iraq and by US Special Forces based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina) and by several correctional facilities in the US forces us to ask the question: What is the relevance of the Sky Watch unit to Port-of-Spain, and by extension the diminishing of crime? The advice on military or correctional facility situations is clearly irrelevant.

An ingredient, crucial to the Sky Watch unit being an effective vantage point from which police officers assigned to it would be able to monitor activities over a relatively wide radius was, apparently, not taken into account by those who were responsible for recommending its purchase. Many buildings clustered in downtown Port-of-Spain are taller than Sky Watch’s maximum 24 feet, and sited as the unit is, near to the Cipriani Statue, much of its desired view is obscured. The fact that the land slopes upward from that supposed vantage point has not helped. While the units may have been excellent for use on the perimetre of prisons, whether in the United States of America or Iraq, particularly those with large compounds, or for that matter to monitor the approach of vehicles along relatively wide roads or open areas in Iraq, will their effectiveness not be hobbled by the tall buildings in Port-of-Spain? Interestingly, several of the public and private sector buildings under construction in Port-of-Spain, west of Frederick  Street, or in advanced stages of planning are, to put it diplomatically, somewhat taller than the Sky Watch unit.

In addition, whether the area is to the north east of the Cipriani Statue or north west, any hope of a clear view is frustrated by the growing optimum use of land space which has determined on a continuing basis that buildings should be as tall as possible. Perhaps, the Laventille Hills and the partially elevated areas of east Port-of-Spain may be more readily viewed by the unit and the two others on order, depending of course on where they will be sited. Understandably, Port-of-Spain needs to deal with its crime levels for the well being of resident people and businesses, and because it is a front runner in the race for the siting of the headquarters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. But whatever it may seek to do to effect the downward trend of the crime graph, it should examine carefully the relevance of any and all anti-crime strategies it may wish to implement.