KEITH “Trinity” Gardner, who built a reputation as a tough and colourful street cop in the 1970s and 1980s, was yesterday named to head a new operations squad that will function within the constabulary’s Mobile Reserve Unit, police spokesman, Superintendent James Forbes confirmed last night.

Police Commissioner Francis Forbes announced Gardner’s appointment at a meeting of about 50 divisional and crime officers for the Kingston Metropolitan Area at the Police Officers Club.

The meeting was called to review the progress of the new crime fighting initiative announced by the government a week ago and to discuss new operational strategies for its continuation.

“The commissioner gave him (Gardner) the charge to command this special operations team and (it) will have islandwide jurisdiction,” said Supt Forbes, the head of the police’s information unit, the Constabulary Communications Network (CCN).

“The squad will initially hit the road this weekend,” he said.

Forbes stressed that Gardner’s team, which has not yet been named, “is all part of the overall crime initiative which was recently announced by Prime Minister (P J) Patterson”.

Under that initiative police and soldiers have been deployed in high-crime communities of the Corporate Area searching for guns and ammunition and hunting gang members. The effort has so far concentrated on the communities of Hannah Town and Payne Avenue which have been the subject of lengthy curfews.

The programme has also extended to other communities and more police officers have been placed on the streets and have stepped up their searches of individuals and vehicles.

The efforts of the police, the government has promised, will be buttressed by a cleaning of inner-city communities, the tearing-down of derelict buildings and housing renewal.

Gardner, widely known by this sobrique, Trinity, made a name for himself in the mid to late 1970s as a young policeman unafraid to confront the most violent criminals, who grew afraid of him.

He burnished that reputation during the violent election campaign of 1980 as a bodyguard to Opposition Leader Edward Seaga and his was part of an image flashed around the world in a dramatic wire service photograph of Seaga’s bodyguards in an alleged gunfight with criminals during one of Seaga’s campaign tours.

Gardner’s tough cop image softened in the mid-1990s when he headed the Half-Way-Tree Police Station and as head of the traffic police, before going to the University of the West Indies law faculty in Barbados.

He recently graduated and returned to the force.

Gardner’s team is in addition to the Reneto Adams-led Crime Management Unit (CMU), the Special Anti- Crime Task Force (SACTF), headed by Senior Superintendent Donald Pusey and Cornwall “Bigga” Ford’s Flying Squad which were made part of the Mobile Reserve last month.

They all report to Assistant Commissioner Arthur “Stitch” Martin who has responsibility for the Mobile Reserve.

Police spokesman Forbes said that the new operational squad was needed to deal with criminals who would migrate from the communities now feeling the heat from the security forces.

“The flexibility of this new unit, joining the other two (CMU and SACTF) will considerably assist in corking entrances open to this type of criminal movement,” Forbes said.