Richard Ra­moutar

Trinidad and To­ba­go is a mem­ber of the Unit­ed Na­tions and is par­ty to both the 1988 UN Con­ven­tion against Il­lic­it Traf­fic in Nar­cot­ic Drugs and Psy­chotrop­ic Drugs and Sub­stances as well as the 2000 UN Con­ven­tion against Transna­tion­al Or­ga­nized Crime and 2001 Pro­to­cols. These are in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions, and they have a cor­re­spond­ing ef­fect on our do­mes­tic ju­ris­dic­tion as well as mak­ing a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty. The term pacta sunt ser­van­da is a bind­ing re­quire­ment or ac­cep­tance by states that they should per­form their oblig­a­tions in good faith. Par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to the law of treaties-eg, the Vi­en­na Con­ven­tion on the Law of Treaties is ar­ti­cle 26 of the said treaty, which pro­vides that 'every treaty in force is bind­ing up­on the par­ties to it and must be per­formed by them in good faith.

Un­der the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 1373, sec­tion 4, notes with con­cern the "close con­nec­tion be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, il­lic­it drugs, mon­ey laun­der­ing, il­le­gal arms traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing and smug­gling, and il­le­gal move­ment of nu­clear, chem­i­cal, bi­o­log­i­cal and oth­er po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly ma­te­ri­als. In this re­gard, it em­pha­sis­es the need to en­hance co-or­di­na­tion of oth­ers on na­tion­al, sub-re­gion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els in or­der to strength­en a glob­al re­sponse to this se­ri­ous chal­lenge and threat to in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Dilem­mas in NS Law

As far as Trinidad and To­ba­go is con­cerned, there is no greater role and no more im­por­tant oblig­a­tion for a gov­ern­ment than the pro­tec­tion and safe­ty of its cit­i­zens. Nat­u­ral­ly, a clear and mean­ing­ful and ef­fec­tive ap­proach to se­cu­ri­ty is just not the foun­da­tion of its pros­per­i­ty, it will be the best as­sur­ance that com­ing gen­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue to en­joy the very best qual­i­ties that made Trinidad and To­ba­go. Such a mag­net­ic at­trac­tion to peo­ples from all dif­fer­ent coun­tries, Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to be a de­sired place of abode in the world. At its core, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty cre­ates the en­vi­ron­ment in which oth­er val­ues flour­ish. As a mat­ter of fact, pro­tect­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is not just an op­tion or pol­i­cy choice, it is the sine qua non to the very ex­is­tence of the rule of law and our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of gov­ern­ment. With­out ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty, rights en­shrined in the con­sti­tu­tion are un­at­tain­able.

Com­plex man­date for Gibbs

In this post 9/11 in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment, one is not cer­tain whether this cur­rent batch of min­is­te­r­i­al na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel are ide­al­ly equipped to con­front the scourges of these transna­tion­al of­fend­ing crimes and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions. Po­lit­i­cal rhetoric on se­cu­ri­ty has filled the di­ges­tive process of a na­tion of weary peo­ple. At­tempt­ing to fill the breach of a rather ne­glect­ed area of deep na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­tel­li­gence strat­e­gy is go­ing to re­quire a cru­cial lev­el of ex­per­tise. It may be in­ter­est­ing to see how Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs can fuse Cana­di­an in­tel­li­gence ex­per­tise to that of the lo­cal po­lice. The point here is that he has to sort out quick­ly those up­on whom he can re­ly for trust­ed sup­port in deep covert op­er­a­tions.

There is sim­ply no mer­it to in­di­cate that crime has de­creased for the past months. More im­por­tant­ly when the cit­i­zens see a dif­fer­ence in po­lice at­ti­tudes, ser­vice and those who are re­al­ly in­volved in the guns and drug trade brought to jus­tice from all as­pects of so­ci­ety, then those sen­ti­ments will be ex­pressed. Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs is now fac­ing the crude re­al­i­ties of deal­ing with crime in its sev­er­al dis­guis­es. It could not have come clos­er than to have his ASP Joel Nedd shot and killed at home, ac­cord­ing to news­pa­per re­ports. This act is no longer a rude awak­en­ing to him and his col­league Jack Ewatsky. All his com­mu­ni­ty vis­its point to two salient fea­tures, lack of po­lice re­spect and abuse and lay­ers of po­lice in­volve­ment in al­leged acts of cor­rup­tion.

This un­der­stand­ing re­quires a dif­fer­ent ap­proach and in­tel­li­gence strat­e­gy. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors con­fronting Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs and his as­sis­tants is what to do to get rid of the il­le­gal guns in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The record un­der sev­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tions show that the in­crease in crimes and mur­ders are due to the avail­abil­i­ty and ever in­creas­ing pres­ence of these il­le­gal weapons and as Gibbs have re­alised him­self. No Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dressed this prob­lem ex­cept with po­lit­i­cal rhetoric and un­ful­filled promis­es which are like the ropes of sand. Crime plans have be­come the epit­o­me of jokes giv­en our cul­ture and so­ci­ety. Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs is be­ing ca­pa­bly ad­vised by con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als in this area, he will de­vel­op a new and dy­nam­ic in­tel­li­gence strat­e­gy to make any im­prove­ments in de­ter­ring, de­tect­ing, and pro­vid­ing a flex­i­ble re­sponse to curb this on­slaught on civ­il so­ci­ety.

Gibbs, like oth­ers be­fore him, must not be­gin to use the same po­lice mantra, and must be care­ful not to be lured in­to a trap of so­cial di­vide be­tween the politi­cians and elites of so­ci­ety and the rest of the so­ci­ety. While leg­is­la­tion may be good, it is not the panacea for all the ills pre­vail­ing. The ap­par­ent in­abil­i­ty to be con­sis­tent in proac­tive en­force­ment mea­sures has al­so cre­at­ed in­nu­mer­able prob­lems like turn­ing a blind eye. If not ap­par­ent, he will soon recog­nise the in­flu­ence of "of­fi­cial­dom" and "the elite" pen­e­trat­ing and com­pro­mis­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty on all fronts. It is on­ly when Com­mis­sion­er un­der­stands this con­cept and ini­ti­ates a unique brand of in­tel­li­gence col­lec­tion with spe­cialised pro­fes­sion­al and be­gin tak­ing "the bull by its horns" from politi­cians, to lawyers, to the busi­ness elite, and all in­volved in white col­lar crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions, then he will earn the re­spect of the pop­u­lace.

Un­less those is­sues are not ad­dressed, Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs and his col­leagues will be just sta­tis­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs does not need any one to tell him that the so­ci­ety and cul­ture flour­ish­es on wheel­ing, deal­ing and cor­rup­tion. Even Min­is­ters of Cab­i­net have made pro­nounce­ments on this mat­ter of cor­rup­tion.

To be con­tin­ued next week–hu­man traf­fick­ing and pos­i­tive rec­om­men­da­tions