Four soldiers from the Royal Bermuda Regiment delivered comprehensive training in crowd-control techniques to members of the Trinidad & Tobago Police Service.

An RBR spokeswoman said that 26 people from the TTPS’s public order unit benefited from the two-week programme, which would equip them with updated methods in public order.

The TTPS officers — five women and 21 men — will also be able to teach the drills within their own organisation.

The regiment’s training team included Warrant Officer Class 2 Tim Furr; Colour Sergeant Runekco Edwards; Colour Sergeant Jason Smith; and Sergeant Swayne Pully-Raynor.

The programme ran from April 7 to April 18 and was aligned with Tradewinds 2025, a US Southern Command-sponsored exercise that will begin in Trinidad & Tobago this month.

Sergeant Major Furr, the RBR’s chief instructor for the programme, said that the TTPS officers were “familiar with public order drills, just not the drills that we’re teaching”.

He added: “Some of it is similar but one of the biggest differences is that they’re used to using six-foot shields whereas we use four-foot shields.

“This group is very keen, very energetic, you can tell they have worked together before, which has made our job so much easier.

“They’re taking on everything we’re teaching them and have been putting it into play very well.”

The instruction included classroom-based theory with the intensity and demands of practical exercises.

In the drills, students honed their skills while kitted out with robust personal protective equipment.

The lessons covered escalation, de-escalation and barricade drills, formations and manoeuvres, the use of less-than-lethal weapons and dealing with petrol bombs.

The training package is the latest public order course to be delivered by the RBR to officers of police, prison and defence services overseas, with previous locations including Belize, Barbados and Guyana.

The spokeswoman said that by training multinational groups as part of Exercise Tradewinds meetings or under the Caribbean’s Regional Security System banner, consistency of standards could be achieved across the organisations’ partner nations.

Sergeant Adelina Hospedales, a lead public order instructor with the TTPS who served as liaison during the course, said the students were excited about the programme.

She added: “It has broadened our scope in terms of the options — new techniques — that are now available to us.

“Of course, there are techniques that we will maintain but there are others that have been taught that are more realistic.

“We see that we can now better manage our human resources when we deploy our officers.”

The TTPS public order unit operates when major events take place and is the only body in Trinidad & Tobago that is mandated to manage large crowds and protests.

Sergeant Hospedales said: “One of the ideas behind Tradewinds is to train officers of the member nations to operate in unison, so that we can provide sufficient support if required.

“For instance, if we had to go to Barbados for whatever reason to offer support and our public order team had to be deployed, the techniques would be standard in relation to what they practise over there.

“That is a huge benefit from this training.”

She added: “On behalf of the Government of Trinidad & Tobago, we truly appreciate this opportunity for our officers to be trained in new techniques of crowd control.

“We look forward to future collaborations.”

• For information on joining the Royal Bermuda Regiment, visit rbr.bm, call 238-1045 or e-mail rbr.recruiting@gov.bm