To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says in­tel­li­gence is now at the heart of To­ba­go’s crime-fight­ing ef­forts as the is­land pre­pares to ac­com­mo­date a co­hort of of­fi­cers and De­fence Force per­son­nel.

“We are retro­fitting old gov­ern­ment quar­ters to cre­ate a pur­pose-built per­ma­nent lo­ca­tion,” he said.

Au­gus­tine added that spe­cial units from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) are cur­rent­ly be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed tem­porar­i­ly.

This batch ar­rived in May af­ter the To­ba­go TTPS Di­vi­sion in­tro­duced its In­ter-Agency Task Force and Guard and Emer­gency Branch of­fi­cers to deal with the crime surge.

He said that even if To­bag­o­ni­ans must be in­con­ve­nienced for a while with more fre­quent traf­fic stops, these mea­sures are nec­es­sary to re­gain con­trol.

“For those of us who are law-abid­ing, it might bring some in­con­ve­nience be­cause it means that in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties, the TTPS will no doubt find them­selves cur­tail­ing peo­ple’s reg­u­lar move­ment.”

Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia at the launch of the Scout TT Camp Ar­gyle in Rox­bor­ough yes­ter­day that there must be ramped-up in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing ini­tia­tives to pre­vent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

He said, “Time­ly gath­er­ing and act­ing on in­tel­li­gence is cru­cial for ap­pre­hend­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Au­gus­tine com­mend­ed To­ba­go po­lice for ar­rest­ing il­le­gal mi­grants on the is­land re­cent­ly af­ter the group had been de­port­ed from Trinidad and re-en­tered the coun­try through To­ba­go.

“The TTPS man­aged to crack this ring, which is a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment.”

In re­sponse to the re­cent shoot­ings in Scar­bor­ough, Whim, and Spring Gar­den, Au­gus­tine as­sured To­ba­go that the TTPS is be­ing equipped with suf­fi­cient ve­hi­cles to man­age pa­trols and out­flows.

“Our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion re­quires a rad­i­cal re­sponse. He said re­vers­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion won’t hap­pen overnight. And the truth is, our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as a coun­try is so far gone that it re­quires a very rad­i­cal re­sponse. It is not some­thing we’ll be able to over­turn overnight. But it cer­tain­ly re­quires a kind of re­sponse we have nev­er seen be­fore.

“And I think the chal­lenge re­al­ly is for the TTPS to fig­ure out what that rad­i­cal re­sponse should be. It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al.”

Ad­dress­ing the in­ad­e­qua­cy of the Coast Guard, Au­gus­tine lament­ed the lack of re­sources and ves­sels nec­es­sary for ef­fec­tive pa­trolling and emer­gency re­sponse.

“The Coast Guard needs to be equipped to lock down the bor­ders and pre­vent the in­flow of il­le­gal guns and drugs,” he said.

“If it is when fish­er­folk find them­selves in trou­ble, we can’t have a re­sponse from the Coast Guard be­cause they’re just not equipped on the is­land.”

He men­tioned that the Prime Min­is­ter, dur­ing the re­cent Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing in To­ba­go, as­sured that the mat­ter is un­der re­view by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to fa­cil­i­tate nec­es­sary amend­ments and im­prove­ments.