Gail Alexan­der

Less than 24 hours af­ter he an­nounced it, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day can­celled his min­istry’s plan to hire pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms for res­i­den­tial pa­trols, since he said peo­ple have ques­tioned if it was nec­es­sary at this time.

Young con­firmed this at yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing. It fol­lowed Tues­day’s an­nounce­ment of the plan, when he an­nounced his min­istry would be hir­ing Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices, Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty, In­no­v­a­tive Se­cu­ri­ty Tech­nolo­gies and Pro­tec­tive Agen­cies for 24-hour res­i­den­tial pa­trols through­out Trinidad up to May 5 in the first in­stance.

The min­istry had stat­ed this was to sup­port law en­force­ment by pro­vid­ing fur­ther pa­trols and man­pow­er in pre­de­ter­mined ar­eas. The min­istry is­sued a sub­se­quent re­lease as­sur­ing the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty wouldn’t have po­lice pow­ers. But the move was crit­i­cised in some quar­ters.

Yes­ter­day, Young ex­plained that pan­demics al­ways strain re­sources, adding his min­istry had ex­am­ined if the COVID prob­lem re­quired more mea­sures and what op­tions would have been avail­able to re­lieve some ar­eas to as­sist the po­lice and army.

“We fore­saw we need­ed to keep the pub­lic safe, es­pe­cial­ly if cer­tain mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed,” Young said.

He said pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty was used in 2014 by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion in a pi­lot project and the four com­pa­nies were the same used by the last gov­ern­ment to pa­trol east, north, south and cen­tral, in­clud­ing in Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas and Palmiste, San Fer­nan­do.

In 2014, the hir­ing price was $95,000 month­ly, he said. But in this in­stance, Gov­ern­ment got the price re­duced to $87,00 for the month. The se­cu­ri­ty guards would have on­ly been “ex­tra eyes and ears” to con­vey in­for­ma­tion to au­thor­i­ties if ad­di­tion­al re­sources were need­ed in an area. They wouldn’t have had ad­di­tion­al pow­ers and were not to have been in­tru­sive, he added.

But in the hours af­ter he an­nounced the plan, Young said “cer­tain voic­es” said they feel safe enough and there was no need for ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“We were very hap­py to hear they felt se­cure and didn’t need ad­di­tion­al mea­sures. Hav­ing heard from the pop­u­la­tion and those with the voic­es, in con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter we’ve tak­en a de­ci­sion to im­me­di­ate­ly can­cel this res­i­den­tial pa­trol sys­tem,” Young said.

Young, how­ev­er, felt it wasn’t ac­cu­rate to say the sit­u­a­tion stemmed from so­cial me­dia back­lash. He said in­for­ma­tion had come to him about a leak from a po­lice sta­tion, af­ter the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er had asked pa­trols to go near po­lice sta­tions so sta­tions would know what was hap­pen­ing. He said a “po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tive” picked up on the leak and “ran with it” and an­oth­er “po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tive” did the same. He said he re­ceived ques­tions on the is­sue af­ter that, but didn’t have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to clar­i­fy.

Young added, “We’re not guid­ed by so­cial me­dia but by mes­sages from the pub­lic. This is sole­ly a re­ac­tion to peo­ple ask­ing if this is nec­es­sary now and we de­cid­ed to can­cel it ... if peo­ple feel the po­lice and De­fence Force are do­ing enough and are ca­pa­ble.”

He said Gov­ern­ment was lis­ten­ing to the pub­lic. He said he’s since asked the po­lice and army to ex­am­ine re­cent­ly re­tired of­fi­cers for a con­tin­gency plan if that’s nec­es­sary.

On why army per­son­nel couldn’t have pro­vid­ed nec­es­sary se­cu­ri­ty, Young said not every of­fi­cer is out at the same time since ro­ta­tions are used to pre­vent burnout. With in­creased COVID mea­sures, he added the army’s been sup­port­ing not on­ly po­lice but Health and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istries.

He said De­fence Force of­fi­cers helped pre­pare the Cou­va and Cau­ra hos­pi­tals overnight for COVID pa­tients and have been se­cur­ing hos­pi­tals and as­sist­ing in pa­tient trans­port. The sol­diers shift­ed the cruise ship pas­sen­gers to Ba­lan­dra when they re­turned to T&T and at 4.30 am yes­ter­day, the Coast Guard trans­port­ed a COVID-pos­i­tive pa­tient from To­ba­go to Trinidad.

Sol­diers al­so out­fit­ted the Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande step-down fa­cil­i­ty for re­cov­er­ing cas­es and re­vamped the River­side Plaza area where home­less peo­ple are to be lo­cat­ed. The army’s al­so con­stant­ly sup­port­ing po­lice, he added, not­ing the COVID is­sue af­fect­ing the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion and the re­cent jail­break at­tempt.