Policing With You- Roles and Functions of the Tactical Units

Responding to hostage situations and bomb threats are just some of the responsibilities of the St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force’s Tactical Units.

And these topics formed part of the discussion on Thursday’s episode of “Policing with You” hosted by Sergeant Treveron Richards.

Sergeant Richards was joined by Tactical Unit Commander, Inspector Alrick Edwards where they examined the roles and functions of the Police Force’s Tactical Units.

Inspector Edwards explained that there are three departments under the tactical unit and they are referred to as such because of the difficulty of their tasks.

“The SSU (Special Services Unit), the Anti-Narcotics Unit and the K-9 Unit are the units that comprise the tactical unit. The reason they are called the tactical unit is that these units are tasked with hard policing. Hard policing means house searches, vehicle check points, foot patrols just to name a few of the activities.”

He went on to outline the role of each department under the unit.

“We know the K-9 unit deals with dogs, the SSU deals mostly with VCPs (vehicle check points), patrols, they mostly deal with crowd control in riotous situations and the Anti- Narcotics unit deals with drugs so that’s basically how we define them.”

Inspector Edwards said a lack of human resources is a major challenge for the tactical unit.

“Well man power is an issue that most departments in the force are challenged with and the tactical department is no different to the other departments. If one could get what they want to work with it would be so much easier but human resources is one of the major problems in the system.”

“Policing with You” airs every Thursday morning at 9:15am on ZIZ radio (96. 1FM) during the “Morning Show”.