Geisha Kow­lessar

The mass shoot­ing in Or­lan­do, Flori­da, which left some 49 dead, is not on­ly a threat to the US but al­so to T&T.

"Whether clas­si­fied as a crime of hate or ter­ror­ism it has caused se­ri­ous threat in the Unit­ed States and for us in the Caribbean and in fact the wider world.

"This act, once again, demon­strates the change in se­cu­ri­ty risks faced by law en­force­ment and oth­er prac­ti­tion­ers in the field of se­cu­ri­ty as in­di­vid­u­als seek to make their point by wag­ing war against their fel­low cit­i­zens."

So said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon while speak­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean Con­fer­ence at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

It was held in part­ner­ship with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean (USC).

Mak­ing ref­er­ence to Venezuela's wors­en­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis Dil­lon said that pre­sent­ed "grave im­pli­ca­tions" for T&T and al­so the wider Caribbean.

But the mat­ter, he added, must be han­dled diplo­mat­i­cal­ly.

He said com­bat­ing crime re­quired in­creased vig­i­lance among se­cu­ri­ty forces, adding that a keen eye must al­so be kept on those in­tent on ter­ror­is­ing so­ci­ety.

Say­ing there were new threats emerg­ing in the Caribbean, which in­clud­ed it be­ing fer­tile ground to re­cruit ISIS mem­bers, the min­is­ter added that could al­so have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on T&T as heinous acts must be con­demned in the strongest pos­si­ble way.

Dil­lon said there was an alarm­ing rate of crime and vi­o­lence in many Caribbean coun­tries but they must come to­geth­er even more to erad­i­cate crim­i­nals and come up with ini­tia­tives.

"De­ci­sion-mak­ers have the col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the ap­pro­pri­ate poli­cies are made avail­able to counter those in­volve in counter transna­tion­al crime.

"Crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty be­long to all of us. We all have a role to play," Dil­lon urged.

He said while grow­ing up in Point Fortin there was al­ways the move­ment of peo­ple from Venezuela through Point Fortin but now the trade com­mod­i­ty has changed to that of "a bas­ket of il­le­gal goods... guns, drugs, traf­fick­ing in peo­ple... which con­tin­ue to threat­en the se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment."

Close re­la­tions be­tween se­cu­ri­ty forces and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty must al­so be main­tained so as to en­hance in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, Dil­lon added.

De­fence force al­ways part of se­cu­ri­ty

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny Dil­lon said the se­cu­ri­ty of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­tin­ued to be of para­mount im­por­tance by "el­e­ments of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty."

Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers de­tailed to guard Row­ley had com­plained of be­ing over­worked with lit­tle time to rest or for mem­bers of their fam­i­lies.

Last Fri­day, Row­ley ar­rived at Par­lia­ment un­der the guard of De­fence Force of­fi­cers.

Pressed fur­ther whether the PM's de­tail had been of­fi­cial­ly re­placed by sol­diers Dil­lon said:

"De­fence Force per­son­nel have al­ways been part of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty el­e­ment that treats with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Pres­i­dent se­cu­ri­ty and they con­tin­ue so to do. Mem­bers of the Spe­cial Branch... mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ue to play a role in the Prime Min­is­ter's se­cu­ri­ty."

On rec­om­men­da­tions that Spe­cial Branch should be con­sid­ered a sep­a­rate unit apart from that of the Po­lice Ser­vice, Dil­lon said the se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment was al­ways dy­nam­ic.

"We con­tin­ue to as­sess the threat on the Prime Min­is­ter and on the Pres­i­dent and through­out T&T and if there is a rea­son to change then we would do so," Dil­lon said.