He said: "We need to look and deal with the so­cial di­men­sion. When one looks at the youth in some com­mu­ni­ties they would tell you they have no oth­er op­tion but to com­mit crime. Re­search has showed that in­ter­ven­tion and ap­proach­es tend to be more suc­cess­ful."Seep­er­sad said gov­ern­ments had fall­en short in com­ing up with a sol­id so­lu­tion in the last 15 years.

He said, "We have al­ways seen fight­ing crime as sup­pres­sive. Many crim­i­nol­o­gists will tell you that the more sus­tain­able way to fight crime is to come up with pre­ven­ta­tive ap­proach­es."Seep­er­sad said T&T had a re­ac­tive mod­el, in that we wait­ed un­til things went wrong and then stepped in to cor­rect it.Com­par­ing T&T to oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, Seep­er­sad said our mur­der rate was too high.

In the last decade, Seep­er­sad said, the high­est num­ber of crimes oc­curred in hot spot ar­eas.He said, "We need to tar­get the high crime ar­eas."How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad said in the last five years there had been im­prove­ments as crime sta­tis­tics were show­ing a down­ward trend.He said, "A big part of it has to do with the pre­ven­ta­tive in­ter­ven­tion that they are start­ing to put in place."

He plead­ed with the min­istry to con­tin­ue to use its bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly. "I am see­ing some of that al­ready."Seep­er­sad does not be­lieve in mil­i­taris­ing the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, but al­low­ing the po­lice and army to work strate­gi­cal­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly in ar­eas that are crime rid­dled.

Grif­fith: We are win­ning the crime war

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, mean­while, said that T&T was win­ning the war on crime as ma­jor crime plum­met­ed by as much as 80 per cent. De­grad­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty was the next tar­get, he said.He said he in­tend­ed to re­duce gang war­fare, fo­cus on ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty, and re­duce the per­cep­tion of fear among cit­i­zens.Grif­fith said, "If we could crack or shut down the gang ac­tiv­i­ty, this will play a ma­jor part to­wards the re­duc­tion of homi­cides."

For 2013, Grif­fith said, 250 of the 400 mur­ders were gang re­lat­ed.In 2010, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said there were 110 gangs op­er­at­ing in T&T, each with an av­er­age mem­ber­ship of 12 peo­ple.Asked if the six ar­moured per­son­nel car­ri­ers and 20 ar­moured ve­hi­cles he in­tend­ed to pur­chase would be used to fight ter­ror­ists, Grif­fith said "no."The ve­hi­cles, Grif­fith said, which were ex­pect­ed to cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 mil­lion each, would be used to pro­tect law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

Grif­fith said the six ar­moured per­son­nel car­ri­ers will not be equipped with any weapon­ry, while the 20 ar­moured ve­hi­cles sim­i­lar to Sports Util­i­ty ve­hi­cles come with bul­let-proof glass. Each ve­hi­cle can with­stand high-pow­ered ri­fles and grenades.Grif­fith said every five days a po­lice of­fi­cer is fired up­on by crim­i­nals.

He said, "This has been go­ing on for the past two years. We are al­low­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to be­come a vul­ner­a­ble tar­get and put their lives at risk. All that we are do­ing is mak­ing sure po­lice of­fi­cers are pro­tect­ed."Grif­fith said the ve­hi­cles would be used for spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tions such as "volatile sit­u­a­tions, counter ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty, and hostage ne­go­ti­a­tions."

Grif­fith promised to go all out to fight the crim­i­nal el­e­ments by util­is­ing the $6.9 bil­lion that was al­lo­cat­ed to his min­istry in the 2014/2015 bud­get. Over the last five years, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has been al­lo­cat­ed $27.6 bil­lion.

Heer­ah: Gangs have 'heavy ar­tillery'

Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) Garvin Heer­ah said that gangs have heavy fire­pow­er and that se­cu­ri­ty forces must meet the threat with mod­ern equip­ment, tac­tics and train­ing. High-pow­ered weapons and ri­fles were con­fis­cat­ed in sev­er­al raids and there was in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence on their ex­is­tence.

He said when weapon­ry of that na­ture was be­ing used against law en­force­ment per­son­nel, it was on­ly ob­vi­ous that the se­cu­ri­ty forces had to scale up and put pre­ven­ta­tive and pro­tec­tive mech­a­nisms in place. Heer­ah said the de­fence forces were al­so es­ca­lat­ing their vig­i­lance and el­e­vat­ing the stan­dards of their weapons, uni­forms, and pro­tec­tive gear to treat with the risks that they faced.

Heer­ah said much of the equip­ment be­ing used by the armed forces were near their ex­pi­ra­tion stage and for the safe­ty of its per­son­nel, these weapons and equip­ment had to be de­com­mis­sioned.He said the crime, the crim­i­nal, and the crim­i­nal­i­ty of the past were dif­fer­ent from to­day.

BOX

Grif­fith's im­ple­men­ta­tion plan for 2014/2015

�2 Un­manned aer­i­al ve­hi­cles

�2 Com­pre­hen­sive K9 au­dit

�2 Taser/pep­per spray for TTPS

�2 Speed gun for po­lice

�2 Ten­ders to com­mence for long-range pa­trol ves­sels

�2 Ten­der for fixed wing air­craft for Air Guard

�2 In­ter­cep­tors for Coast Guard

�2 Coast guard float­ing plat­forms

�2 Radar to be ful­ly op­er­a­tional

�2 GPS on all Coast Guard ves­sels

�2 In­crease in Rapid Re­sponse Unit

�2 2 hov­er­crafts

�2 Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty train­ing acad­e­my–in­door and out­door range

�2 William Brat­ton to do au­dit on TTPS

�2 6 he­li­copters for Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tion Cen­tre.

�2 Pub­lic re­la­tions train­ing for TTPS

�2 Ar­moured ve­hi­cles

�2 Ar­moured per­son­nel car­ri­ers

�2 Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work pol­i­cy

�2 May­or Rudy Giu­liani to pro­vide train­ing to im­prove law en­force­ment

�2 Shot spot­ter

�2 2 50-me­tre coastal pa­trol ves­sels.

Crime fight­ing mea­sures un­der­tak­en from 2010 to 2014

�2 13 po­lice sur­veil­lance bays con­struct­ed along the me­di­ans of the Uri­ah But­ler and Solomon Ho­choy high­ways at a cost of over $10 mil­lion

�2 Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trol launched at a cost of $5.2 mil­lion for a tri­al pe­ri­od of four months.

�2 A vis­i­ble in­crease in law en­force­ment pres­ence through­out the coun­try with more an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions, road­blocks and stop and search ex­er­cis­es

�2 Mod­ern­iza­tion and de­vel­op­ment of the Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties to im­prove de­tec­tion rates

�2 Re-es­tab­lish­ing of bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ships with Venezuela and Colom­bia so as to fos­ter a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to bor­der se­cu­ri­ty

�2 Uti­liz­ing William Brat­ton and the for­mer May­or of New York Rudy Giu­liani, who to­geth­er were re­spon­si­ble for the mas­sive crime re­duc­tion in New York city. This part­ner­ship would re­sult in a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as­sess­ment for T&T, as well as es­tab­lish work­ing re­la­tion­ships be­tween the NYPD and the TTPS and oth­er lead na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies

�2 The es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Group, a high­ly trained Counter Ter­ror­ism Group, in­volv­ing mem­bers of TTPS, TTDF, Pris­ons and Cus­toms of­fi­cers

�2 Ac­qui­si­tion of 12,500 body bags

�2 An ad­di­tion­al 1,000 po­lice of­fi­cers and 1,400 spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cers re­cruit­ed

�2 $70 mil­lion spent by Gov­ern­ment to in­crease the TTPS' fleet of ve­hi­cles by 200

�2 Eight state-of-the-art po­lice sta­tions with com­put­erised tech­nol­o­gy con­struct­ed in Ari­ma, Pi­ar­co, Mal­oney, Cu­mu­to, La Brea, Oropouche, Bras­so and Moru­ga

�2 Rapid re­sponse units with­in var­i­ous po­lice di­vi­sions strength­ened with more than 330 po­lice ve­hi­cles equipped with GPS track­ing sys­tems.

�2 Har­bour pa­trol ves­sels for Coast Guard.

�2 Body cam­eras for TTPS

�2 Ex­pan­sion of CCTV net­work by 500 cam­eras through­out T&T

�2 Cus­tomer ser­vice and pro­to­col train­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers to im­prove po­lice pro­fes­sion­al­ism on the job and in their in­ter­ac­tions with cit­i­zens

�2Use of sim­u­la­tion the­atres to train of­fi­cers in re­al life en­coun­ters to en­sure min­i­mum use of force

�2 Train­ing of more than 269 Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors to in­crease the staff at the Homi­cide In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau of the TTPS.

�2Or­dered 2,500 9mm pis­tols

�2Vol­un­teer De­fence Force was called out to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance from Au­gust 29 to Jan­u­ary 7, 2015.