It is pre­ma­ture to make any links to crim­i­nal con­duct, or to say if any oth­er Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) em­ploy­ees will be ter­mi­nat­ed, since the re­view in­to the is­sues at the agency is on­go­ing, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Hinds gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day in re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s query.

Mark, not­ing the March 2024 ter­mi­na­tion of nine SSA em­ploy­ees al­leged­ly linked to se­ri­ous crim­i­nal con­duct, asked if any oth­er ter­mi­na­tions are an­tic­i­pat­ed at the SSA.

Hinds not­ed the is­sues raised by Mark were very se­ri­ous mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter, as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) head, had spo­ken pub­licly about these is­sues.

Hinds added, “As to the sug­ges­tion, in re­spect to any link to crim­i­nal con­duct, this is quite pre­ma­ture and it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for me to com­ment any fur­ther on these mat­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this stage. (Mark’s) as­sump­tion is whol­ly pre­ma­ture.”

Mark asked if there was any in­ten­tion to weed out any un­de­sir­ables who may still ex­ist with­in the SSA’s “bow­els”.

Hinds replied, “These are mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, they’ve been spo­ken to thus far by the Prime Min­is­ter as NSC head and it’s quite pre­ma­ture to come to any con­clu­sions while the mat­ters are be­ing re­viewed as in­deed they are.”

Min­is­ter sat­is­fied with

Harpe Place pa­trols

Hinds al­so replied to Mark’s query on whether or not there would be an in­creased po­lice pres­ence in Harpe Place, Port-of-Spain, af­ter the March 2024 mur­ders of five men there.

Hinds said fo­cused ef­forts have been made to bol­ster the TTPS “to treat with this very un­for­tu­nate and press­ing con­cern”. He said ef­forts in­clude round-the-clock TTPS pa­trols, es­pe­cial­ly by of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, In­ter-Agency Task Force and the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Task Force in the Harpe Place area and en­vi­rons.

He said these are al­so done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Guard and Emer­gency Branch, Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit and Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Unit.

“In ad­di­tion, the Port-of-Spain Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit and Port-of-Spain Task Force are con­duct­ing on­go­ing in­tel­li­gence-led ex­er­cis­es tar­get­ing gangs and pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers with­in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion. They’re al­so en­gaged in joint sta­tion pa­trols which are ac­tive­ly un­der­way, en­sur­ing con­tin­u­ous co-or­di­na­tion and ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” he added.

Hinds said the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion and its Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID) and Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion and Bel­mont CID are as­sist­ing the east Port-of-Spain pa­trols.

“Lay­er up­on lay­er of dif­fer­ent units pa­trolling and keep­ing the area un­der man­ners and un­der watch,” Hinds said.

He ex­plained that more joint pa­trols and army pa­trols are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with CID and oth­er spe­cial teams were formed, with TTPS in­tel­li­gence and op­er­a­tional units as­sist­ing.

Hinds, who said he is the MP for the area and had seen some op­er­a­tions, added: “I’m quite tempt­ed to say I’m sat­is­fied but you know in this busi­ness of deal­ing with crime, it flares up any­time, any­where ... but the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent in charge of Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion and un­der the di­rec­tion of the se­nior of­fi­cers are con­duct­ing what I con­sid­er to be quite sat­is­fac­to­ry op­er­a­tion in that area and en­vi­rons.”