An­na-Lisa Paul

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi is de­fend­ing Gov­ern­ment’s mul­ti-pronged ap­proach to get crime un­der con­trol as he said stricter mea­sures, amend­ed leg­is­la­tion and a re­newed law en­force­ment thrust is be­ing used to at­tack crim­i­nals on all fronts.

And while he is pre­dict­ing a surge over the com­ing months as they con­tin­ue to press gang and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, the AG said, “You are go­ing to see these kinds of things hap­pen as we take the war to­wards crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

How­ev­er, he said nei­ther he nor his Cab­i­net col­leagues would be de­terred in their thrust to again make the cit­i­zens of this coun­try feel safe and pro­tect­ed. The AG spoke in an in­ter­view last week­end.

Sad­dened by the fact that the mur­der rate has crossed the 500 mark and with 22 days left to go be­fore the year ends, Al-Rawi said, “A large part of mur­ders in this coun­try are dri­ven by gang war­fare and in this in­stance, gang war­fare has to be man­aged very strict­ly by a com­bi­na­tion of au­thor­i­ties work­ing to­geth­er.”

Claim­ing that gang lead­ers are the ones who push for mur­der in or­der to ac­quire ter­ri­to­ry and prof­it, the AG said based on the state and con­di­tion of T&T’s ex­ist­ing bail laws - re­put­ed gang lead­ers are be­ing ap­pre­hend­ed but are re­leased back in­to so­ci­ety.

De­clar­ing this state­ment not to be a con­dem­na­tion on the Ju­di­cia­ry, Al-Rawi said, “It comes right back down to re­stric­tions on bail and for Par­lia­ment to lay the tone of what it ought to be.”

Al-Rawi said for law en­force­ment to have a fight­ing chance to re­store law and or­der, “Crim­i­nal­i­ty must be kept off the streets.”

He said this was the mech­a­nism em­ployed to bring kid­nap­pings un­der con­trol when there was a surge in this wor­ry­ing trend sev­er­al years ago.

De­scrib­ing as “dra­mat­i­cal­ly im­pact­ful” some of the mea­sures Gov­ern­ment is in the process of en­act­ing in­to law, Al-Rawi ad­mit­ted, “Yes, our coun­try is fight­ing the scourge of crime. Yes, these are very dif­fer­ent times in terms of the ex­ter­nal pres­sures up­on on T&T.”

And while crime is se­ri­ous, it is not out of con­trol.

Al-Rawi stat­ed, “We say­ing crim­i­nalise law en­force­ment and pro­tect them. We are say­ing re­strict bail. We are say­ing take the prof­its out of crime.”

Claim­ing that crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es flour­ish on cash - Al-Rawi said the rush to change out the $100 bill has been a care­ful­ly de­signed move aimed at dis­man­tling such op­er­a­tions.

“That is ob­vi­ous­ly not by mis­take,” he said, as Gov­ern­ment was in­tent on putting rel­e­vant laws in place.

Qui­et­ly proud of the co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach which he as­sured would bear fruit over the long term, the AG went on, “Every el­e­ment is re­quired to do its’ part. This is not a one-en­ti­ty show and we are ag­gres­sive­ly push­ing for this.”

He pre­dict­ed that with­in the next cou­ple of weeks, the pop­u­la­tion would wit­ness a lev­el of so­bri­ety blan­ket­ing this coun­try as, “We ag­gres­sive­ly tar­get gangs and crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es, we are go­ing to see a surge which will have to be quelled be­cause we are at war.”