DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has de­scribed as “heinous, vi­o­lent and a trag­ic state of af­fairs”, the bru­tal mur­der of four young peo­ple and in­jury to five oth­ers at La Re­treat Ex­ten­sion in the Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma, on Thurs­day.

The sib­lings, Faith Pe­terkin, 10, Ar­ri­an­na Pe­terkin, 14, Shane Pe­terkin, 17, and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19, were gunned down at their Grav­el Road, La Re­treat Ex­ten­sion home around 12.25 am on Thurs­day as they were asleep. Five oth­er peo­ple were shot but sur­vived.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the 2023 Na­tion­al Youth Awards at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel hours af­ter the in­ci­dent on Thurs­day, Hinds said just like the en­tire so­ci­ety, he was ap­palled and stunned by the grue­some at­tack.

“It was a very heinous and vi­o­lent sit­u­a­tion again, con­sis­tent with trends not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but across the re­gion, the use of firearms, most like­ly il­le­gal,” Hinds said.

“Four per­sons lost their lives to­day, three teenagers and a ten-year-old. It’s a very trag­ic state of af­fairs, as I said, re­flect­ing the lev­els of vi­o­lence that ex­ist, re­flect­ing the pres­ence of il­le­gal firearms in the coun­try and re­flect­ing a gen­er­al state of af­fairs that is very painful­ly un­de­sir­able. So, I am con­fi­dent that the po­lice will pur­sue this in­ves­ti­ga­tion to the depths of it and I’m re­al­ly hop­ing that they can find the per­pe­tra­tors and do what po­lice have to do, pros­e­cute them and let them ac­count for their das­tard­ly ac­tions be­fore the courts of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Re­fer­ring to the lack of com­pas­sion for chil­dren in the at­tack, Hinds added, “Man’s in­hu­man­i­ty to man is be­com­ing more and more ev­i­dent by the hour, so some­thing is hap­pen­ing to hu­man be­ings gen­er­at­ing those kinds of be­hav­iours.”

He again as­sert­ed that il­le­gal guns re­mained a scourge in Trinidad and To­ba­go and not­ed that more mil­i­tary of­fi­cials may be de­ployed to cur­tail crime in the weeks ahead. He al­so re­vealed his min­istry was ear­marked to re­ceive a size­able al­lo­ca­tion in the up­com­ing bud­get to en­sure that the bor­ders were se­cured.

“Re­cent­ly, we have put even more (sol­diers) out there to as­sist the po­lice in try­ing to re­strain the crim­i­nal­i­ty that is af­fect­ing us. They are out there and per­haps in the next few weeks you might even see more,” Hinds said.

“To­day (yes­ter­day), for ex­am­ple, I had the joy of see­ing a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey to be tar­get­ed to a very, very crit­i­cal el­e­ment for me in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as we try to im­prove the bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, be­cause I told you that crim­i­nal­i­ty that you saw last night in the Ari­ma area, it re­flect­ed a trend where il­le­gal firearms are used in 87 per cent of the mur­ders that we have ex­pe­ri­enced,” he added.

Hinds al­so sought to re­mind the pub­lic that a vet­ted unit would be es­tab­lished in con­junc­tion with the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions to tar­get the transna­tion­al guns trade.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the min­is­ter’s pro­pos­al to ar­rest crime, which has seem­ing­ly wors­ened with re­cent re­ports of mass shoot­ings and mul­ti­ple fa­tal­i­ties, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said joint ex­er­cis­es be­tween the po­lice and mil­i­tary were wel­comed.

Seep­er­sad said spo­radic pa­trols may de­ter crim­i­nals but not­ed that it may not have pre­vent­ed the Gua­napo mas­sacre.

In ad­di­tion, he said, the in­crease in fund­ing to­wards bor­der se­cu­ri­ty was a pos­i­tive step in the right di­rec­tion, as T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced an in­flux of weapons from both North and South Amer­i­ca.

“What mat­ters is how you utilise that and how you fo­cus it as well, be­cause the bor­ders are very large and even if there’s a sub­stan­tial in­crease in fund­ing, it wouldn’t al­low us to ful­ly pa­trol the bor­ders. What we need to start to think about is what means would be ef­fec­tive. For in­stance, could there be some kind of elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing of the bor­ders, even let’s say good use of satel­lite im­agery,” he said.

Dr Seep­er­sad said the traf­fick­ing of per­sons al­so re­mained an area of con­cern, spelling pos­si­ble “dis­as­ter” for a na­tion al­ready grap­pling with high re­ports of vi­o­lence.

Care­ful not to stig­ma­tise an en­tire eth­nic group, the crim­i­nol­o­gist said Venezue­lan gang lead­ers were al­so mak­ing their way to this coun­try.

“You’re talk­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­ter-gang ri­val­ries be­tween Venezue­lan gangs and lo­cal gangs, so it could spell dis­as­ter and it’s well known that some South Amer­i­can gangs, they’re far more vi­o­lent than the gangs we have here,” he said.