KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) seeks to re­duce mur­ders by 20 per cent us­ing its new Vi­o­lent Crime Re­duc­tion Plan, at least two crim­i­nol­o­gists do not be­lieve it can achieve those re­sults alone. 

They be­lieve we need all hands on deck–that dif­fer­ent arms of law en­force­ment and cit­i­zens must work to­geth­er to en­sure that the an­ti-crime plan is suc­cess­ful.

With vi­o­lent crime fes­ter­ing through­out T&T and con­tin­u­ous calls from var­i­ous sec­tors for po­lice to get a han­dle on crime, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds re­vealed snip­pets of the an­ti-crime plan in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Wednes­day. The TTPS ex­pects to achieve 11 tar­gets, which in­clude a 30 per cent homi­cide de­tec­tion rate, us­ing pre­ci­sion, in­tel­li­gence, pre­ven­tion, proac­tiv­i­ty, and pros­e­cu­tion.

Its 15 ob­jec­tives in­clude dis­man­tling crim­i­nal gangs, seiz­ing il­le­gal firearms, erad­i­cat­ing drug blocks, and iden­ti­fy­ing pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers. The TTPS al­so seeks to in­crease fo­cus on transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, con­trol move­ments on road­ways and pub­lic spaces, and en­hance po­lice in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties. 

“With this plan, a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in the said crimes is an­tic­i­pat­ed, there­by im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life in all com­mu­ni­ties across T&T,” Hinds said.

Speak­ing to Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, crim­i­nol­o­gists Dr Randy Seep­er­sad and Dau­rius Figueira be­lieve that while some tar­gets are nec­es­sary, they would like to see the en­tire plan. Figuera said one must un­der­stand how the TTPS per­ceived the re­al­i­ty of crime and com­pare it with the mea­sures. Seep­er­sad is in­ter­est­ed in how the po­lice will ex­e­cute its plan and learn the ap­proach­es it will take.

Seep­er­sad re­called speak­ing to Grena­di­an Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ed­vin Mar­tin re­cent­ly about the coun­try’s 85 per cent de­tec­tion rate. He learned that col­lab­o­ra­tive work among law en­force­ment agen­cies, es­pe­cial­ly when tar­get­ing pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers, ac­count­ed for their abil­i­ty to de­tect and pros­e­cute. 

“Whether it is fi­nan­cial in­tel­li­gence, foren­sics, po­lice, cus­toms, or im­mi­gra­tion, any­one with a part to play sits at the ta­ble, shares their in­for­ma­tion, and pieces a case strong enough to stand be­fore a court of law. Their mod­el has been suc­cess­ful. In T&T, we do not co­op­er­ate at that lev­el,” Seep­er­sad said.

Criminologist Dr Randy Seepersad

Dis­man­tling gangs

One of the aims of the an­ti-crime plan is to tar­get key gang mem­bers. Mea­sures in­clude en­hanc­ing po­lice in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ty and build­ing po­lice re­la­tion­ships with com­mu­ni­ties. Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher al­so hopes to charge 20 gang­sters un­der the An­ti-Gang Act and 40 pri­or­i­ty of­fend­ers. 

Figuera said the TTPS must ad­dress transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with gangs as play­ers are con­nect­ed. He be­lieves the TTPS plans to dis­man­tle gangs are nec­es­sary, but suc­cess de­pends on an ef­fec­tive roll­out.

“What it out­lined so far is Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dure. There has to be ef­fec­tive­ness now. The TTPS men­tioned transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime in the plan, so I wait to see,” Figuera said.

The TTPS plans ex­ten­sive da­ta min­ing on gangs to as­cer­tain size, lo­ca­tions, mem­ber­ship and oth­er fea­tures. It will al­so tar­get the most vi­o­lent mem­bers, in­clud­ing those with out­stand­ing war­rants and drug deal­ers. But Figuera said he be­lieved the TTPS did this as an op­er­a­tional stan­dard, as is the case in oth­er coun­tries. How­ev­er, once done, pros­e­cu­tors need wit­ness­es to tes­ti­fy against those gang­sters. Ac­knowl­edg­ing the TTPS hopes to build a re­la­tion­ship with com­mu­ni­ties, Figuera said this was nec­es­sary and re­quired a lot of work to break a code of si­lence in gang-ruled com­mu­ni­ties.

Mean­while, Seep­er­sad said po­lice should have used these an­ti-gang mea­sures be­fore and sug­gest­ed it could work. How­ev­er, he said, the TTPS needs leg­is­la­tion to back its ap­proach to tar­get gang­sters, re­call­ing the courts re­leased over 150 peo­ple ar­rest­ed un­der the An­ti-Gang Act dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency as there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to bring le­gal vic­to­ries, re­sult­ing in law­suits against the State. 

“The po­lice could pur­sue cer­tain peo­ple, and if they can­not meet the le­gal re­quire­ments for de­tain­ing or charg­ing these peo­ple, every­thing will fall apart de­spite the best ef­forts and re­sults of the po­lice. You have to be very care­ful. It is one thing to say that in­tel­li­gence points to cer­tain peo­ple. It is very dif­fer­ent to get ev­i­dence that will stand up in court even when a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer does pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine the suit­abil­i­ty of the case to go for­ward to tri­al.” 

Seep­er­sad said if the TTPS us­es in­tel­li­gence, fi­nan­cial and for­eign agen­cies, wire­tap­ping and oth­er tech­nolo­gies to gath­er sol­id ev­i­dence, it can present good cas­es.

Criminologist Daurius Figueira

Guardian Archives

Re­duc­ing firearms

The TTPS plans to re­duce the num­ber of il­le­gal firearms on the streets. Hinds said they were in­volved in 87 per cent of 2022 mur­ders.

Seep­er­sad said a firearms study showed it was too easy to get guns in­to T&T. Ac­knowl­edg­ing the TTPS plan to step up in­tel­li­gence-guid­ed Stop and Search ex­er­cis­es, Seep­er­sad said these mea­sures could be hit-and-miss. How­ev­er, he agreed with the strat­e­gy, say­ing that for every gun po­lice re­trieve, they save sev­er­al lives and take crim­i­nals off the streets. He said it should be a tar­get­ed ap­proach, ac­cept­ing the plan’s ref­er­ence to hot spot polic­ing. 

“We have a good idea of where those ar­eas are, based on crime sta­tis­tics and spa­tial in­for­ma­tion, so if you tar­get your Stop and Search prop­er­ly, you will get some guns.”

He ac­cept­ed that What­sApp traf­fic groups could thwart po­lice ex­er­cis­es as mem­bers post the lo­ca­tions of road­blocks. He added that mo­torists some­times turn around when they spot a po­lice road­block or traf­fic con­ges­tion.

For Figuera, curb­ing il­le­gal firearms on the streets is not a po­lice job but for the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) and Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

“All the TTPS do is play catch-up, try­ing to hold the hors­es be­cause the band burns down. Do not blame the TTPS for what is hap­pen­ing with gun vi­o­lence be­cause their re­mit was not to con­trol the ports.”

Seep­er­sad agreed, say­ing oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies have more im­por­tant roles in pre­vent­ing il­le­gal gun im­por­ta­tion. How­ev­er, he said the equip­ment and hu­man re­sources of the Coast Guard were in­suf­fi­cient for ef­fec­tive bor­der pa­trols. T&T lacks tech­nol­o­gy, like satel­lite and drone sur­veil­lance and mar­itime and air sen­sor de­tec­tion.

Seep­er­sad said it was easy to bring a gun in­to the coun­try be­cause port au­thor­i­ties do not check all pieces of lug­gage, and the CED can­not scan every ship­ping con­tain­er.

“It has nev­er been up to the po­lice alone, but every­body puts the meat of the prob­lem at the feet of the po­lice, and they blame the po­lice when things go wrong. It is, ob­vi­ous­ly, about pris­ons, courts, in­tel­li­gence, and foren­sics. It is a lot of dif­fer­ent sys­tems that have to come to­geth­er to play.”