Joshua Sur­tees

Gary Grif­fith's claim that his new na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty set­up could put down an at­tempt­ed coup with­in an hour came af­ter he had giv­en the me­dia a tour of the new Emer­gency Dis­patch Cen­tre in St James–an ex­er­cise de­signed to show the in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy his min­istry has made.

He al­so of­fi­cial­ly un­veiled the Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trol pi­lot scheme in­volv­ing trained of­fi­cers from pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms.

His com­ments came in the wake of 18 ar­rests at the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen's Cara­po mosque last week, in­cit­ing the Ja­maat leader Yasin Abu Bakr to an­gri­ly an­nounce in a ra­dio in­ter­view that he would take "ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion" against Grif­fith, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams and In­spec­tor Roger Alexan­der, if such po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ued. At the me­dia ex­er­cise, at the St James Po­lice Acad­e­my on Thurs­day, Grif­fith said gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty in the "hotspots" of Laven­tille had re­duced in the past few days, due to the ac­tiv­i­ty of the T&T De­fence Force and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, but that the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty alert re­mained at the same lev­el.

Ear­li­er, Grif­fith had cut the rib­bon of a high-tech, ful­ly kit­ted-out emer­gency re­sponse call cen­tre and ex­plained the func­tion of the red-shirt­ed Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trol (CCP) of­fi­cers which the leader of the op­po­si­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ex­pressed mys­ti­fi­ca­tion about at a PNM pub­lic meet­ing in St Au­gus­tine on Tues­day. Row­ley had de­scribed see­ing two of­fi­cers as­signed to that unit in an "un­marked" car on his road as he left his house and de­scribed them as "un­trained, un­known peo­ple dri­ving around in strange cars pre­tend­ing to be po­lice."

He de­mand­ed that the gov­ern­ment ex­plain who they were, what they were au­tho­rised to do and how much the scheme was cost­ing.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­spond­ed by hasti­ly call­ing the press con­fer­ence two days lat­er which an­swered Row­ley's ques­tions. The CCP pa­trol of­fi­cers are trained, Grif­fith said, but will have no pow­ers of ar­rest and will not car­ry guns.

Their re­mit is to cruise ar­eas which do not have their own pri­vate­ly fund­ed Neigh­bour­hood Watch schemes in dis­creet­ly marked pick-up trucks, act­ing as "ex­tra eyes and ears" and as a form of de­ter­rence. These pri­vate of­fi­cers, he said, will in­form the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre or po­lice of­fi­cers when they ob­serve crime tak­ing place. The CCP pa­trol team will con­sist of em­ploy­ees from four pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms–G4S, Amal­ga­mat­ed, In­no­v­a­tive and Pro­tec­tive Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices–and the pi­lot scheme is cost­ing the gov­ern­ment $5.2m for an ini­tial four month pe­ri­od.

Asked whether there was a ten­der­ing process, Kei­th Re­naud, Di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of Law En­force­ment Pol­i­cy, said the con­tracts were as­signed by "se­lec­tive ten­der­ing, as man­dat­ed by Cab­i­net."