JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day al­lo­cat­ed $6.113 bil­lion to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in the 2025 Bud­get. To date, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has re­ceived $66.9461 bil­lion over the ten years Im­bert has pre­sent­ed a fis­cal pack­age.

Ad­dress­ing crime in the Bud­get, Im­bert said the po­lice ser­vice’s Spe­cial An­ti-crime Op­er­a­tion Unit will im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress home in­va­sions. He al­so promised high­er vis­i­bil­i­ty of of­fi­cers with a sub­stan­tial in­crease in po­lice ve­hi­cles.

Im­bert said, “To en­hance po­lice pres­ence, the po­lice ser­vice seeks to ad­vance its fleet by 2,000 ve­hi­cles over the next three years, with 500 new ve­hi­cles in the first phase. A new train­ing fa­cil­i­ty will be es­tab­lished at Cu­mu­to to fa­cil­i­tate new re­cruits and the con­tin­u­ous train­ing of cur­rent of­fi­cers.”

Calls and mes­sages to Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, for feed­back went unan­swered last evening.

As the coun­try grap­ples with a mur­der count of over 470, Im­bert promised the rein­tro­duc­tion of Project Build­ing Blocks aimed at tack­ling gang vi­o­lence.

“In 2025, the min­istry will re­in­force the crime man­age­ment strat­e­gy. PBB fol­lows the cure vi­o­lence method­ol­o­gy us­ing a pub­lic health ap­proach to crime and vi­o­lence re­duc­tion.”

With eight of the Coast Guard’s ves­sels cur­rent­ly in need of re­pairs, Im­bert promised the pur­chase of 12 new ves­sels, four pa­trol launch­ers and eight high-speed in­ter­cep­tors, to aid in bor­der se­cu­ri­ty.

It is part of the al­lo­ca­tion to the De­fence Force, he said, as he ad­dressed the con­cerns over crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. The oth­er promis­es in­clud­ed pur­chas­ing two search and res­cue/sur­veil­lance fixed-wing air­craft, drones to as­sist with sur­veil­lance and search and res­cue; and the con­tin­ued up­grad­ing of the coun­try’s Damen and Austal Ves­sels.

Mean­while, Im­bert’s promise to ex­pand the elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem with­in the next fis­cal year did not of­fer any com­fort to Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don.

Gor­don spoke with Guardian Me­dia mo­ments af­ter Im­bert an­nounced that the ex­ist­ing pro­gramme will be ex­pand­ed, say­ing it will as­sist in ad­dress­ing over­crowd­ing at the prison.

Im­bert al­so promised to in­crease pro­grammes aimed at stem­ming re­cidi­vism.

Gor­don said the cur­rent re­mand pop­u­la­tion is over 2,000, and the ex­pan­sion of the an­kle mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem may not do much to ad­dress this.

“I’m not see­ing that hap­pen­ing, or any great re­duc­tion hap­pen­ing in the num­bers that will lend to us im­prov­ing our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion,” Gor­don said.

Im­bert al­so promised a stronger, hard­er-to-re­move an­kle mon­i­tor, af­ter the coun­try’s first con­vict for hu­man traf­fick­ing, An­tho­ny Michael Smith, re­moved his an­kle mon­i­tor and ab­scond­ed last year. He was even­tu­al­ly re­cap­tured.

Gor­don said while an­kle mon­i­tor­ing is im­por­tant, it was a “fick­le” is­sue when tak­ing in­to ac­count the is­sues re­gard­ing the “day-to-day” op­er­a­tions of the pris­ons.