Gail Alexan­der

?Twen­ty-nine po­lice of­fi­cers are cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed and 249 have been charged with var­i­ous of­fences, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph said yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on the 2009-10 bud­get, Joseph, speak­ing about the of­fi­cers, said he had not­ed the view of some peo­ple who have queried trans­fers. Joseph said he had cer­tain views on what should hap­pen in such sit­u­a­tions, but he said the au­thor­i­ties had to abide by the law. On im­prove­ments for the se­cu­ri­ty sec­tor, Joseph said "a com­pre­hen­sive" amend­ment to the De­fence Force Act–for a role in polic­ing–plus a four-piece om­nibus pack­age of leg­is­la­tion were ahead.

Joseph said var­i­ous coun­tries, in­clud­ing the UK and US, were mak­ing greater use of their de­fence forces in their lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty thrust. A team head­ed by re­tired Jus­tice Ul­ric Cross has re­viewed T&T's De­fence Act. The om­nibus pack­age in­cludes pro­pos­als to out­law gangs, amend­ments to the bail bill to pre­vent peo­ple out on bail to re­peat crimes, a se­cu­ri­ty of in­for­ma­tion bill to safe­guard ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion in cer­tain de­part­ments and pro­pos­als to in­ter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tion (wire­tap­ping). Joseph al­so said T&T's new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty frame­work–rec­om­mend­ed un­der the Ross Re­port–will be in­tel­li­gence led, pre­ven­ta­tive and in­for­ma­tion ori­ent­ed.

The re­port was done by HCR In­ter­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ltd of Cana­da, he said. He said the Cab­i­net ac­cept­ed 275 of its 300 rec­om­men­da­tions which re­viewed 12 ar­eas of T&T's se­cu­ri­ty sec­tor from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The re­port is the re­sult of ex­ten­sive in­ter­views of more than 150 serv­ing and re­tired lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts and a re­view of pre­vi­ous rec­om­men­da­tions. Since the re­port's first draft, Joseph said agen­cies have strength­end op­er­a­tions.

In­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit and po­lice had led to a 29 per cent de­tec­tion rate in gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders and a 21 per cent mur­der de­tec­tion rate or 2009 as op­posed to 16 per­cent for the same pe­ri­od last year. Joseph said 916 road­blocks have led to 9,758 ar­rests plus seizure of 233 guns, 2,214 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, 147.4 kg of co­caine and 3050.92 kg of mar­i­jua­na and de­struc­tion of 45,050 mar­i­jua­na trees. "How­ev­er we're see­ing in­creased mur­ders as­so­ci­at­ed with al­ter­ca­tions, rob­beries, do­mes­tic re­lat­ed mat­ters," Joseph added.