The fear of crim­i­nals com­ing out with a vengeance at the end of the state of emer­gency is re­al, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy. And Trinidad and To­ba­go's se­cu­ri­ty forces are beef­ing up their in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty dur­ing the state of emer­gency (SoE) to counter any un­to­ward ac­tiv­i­ty that may be planned by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment af­ter the SoE ends. Sandy makes this rev­e­la­tion in his first wide-rang­ing, one-on-one in­ter­view with a news­pa­per since he as­sumed the port­fo­lio of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter fol­low­ing the May 24, 2010 com­ing in of­fice by the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The for­mer head of the coun­try's De­fence Force, who ad­mits crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty can nev­er be erad­i­cat­ed, is, how­ev­er, op­ti­mistic that T&T will nev­er re­turn to the pre-SoE pe­ri­od when gun-tot­ing killers had the en­tire coun­try trau­ma­tised by the grue­some killing of gang mem­bers and in­no­cent vic­tims. He al­so speaks of the set­ting up of a spe­cial unit to weed out the rogue el­e­ments with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

Q: Min­is­ter Sandy, you have been in of­fice 16 months now, what has been your worst fail­ure to date?

A: (A 15-sec­ond con­tem­pla­tive mode in the con­fer­ence room of his Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice Wednes­day af­ter­noon) I can­not think of any fail­ures per se. I ad­mit there are some ar­eas that I would not have been as suc­cess­ful as I would have liked.

I don't know if you have the time to lis­ten to the talk shows, par­tic­u­lar­ly on some ra­dio fre­quen­cies where your de­trac­tors have been con­stant­ly crit­i­cis­ing you some­times in the most vit­ri­olic lan­guage, some say very un­fair­ly at times?

Well, that is not be­ing fair to me and I will tell you why-If for the year there are no se­ri­ous crimes, no homi­cides, some­body would still con­jure up some­thing neg­a­tive to say about me. I am here to as­sist my coun­try, I feel I can make a dif­fer­ence and that's the pri­ma­ry rea­son I am here.

Have you ever for at least one mo­ment re­gret­ted ac­cept­ing this job, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the num­ber of ad­verse com­ments you have been sub­ject­ed to over the pros­e­cu­tion of your man­date?

No. No. I have not re­gret­ted. Of course, there were some mo­ments when I had some grave con­cerns.

What were some of these con­cerns and did they in­clude the Resh­mi im­broglio?

Well...well, yes, yes...the man­ner in which that un­fold­ed.

Over the man­ner in which it was re­port­ed that you were forced to make a state­ment dur­ing one of the de­bates in the Par­lia­ment?

(A sharp re­sponse) No­body can force me to do any­thing. No­body can. I say that with­out fear or favour. What hap­pened was that I was on my feet in the Low­er House and I in­di­cat­ed-based on the in­for­ma­tion that I had-the can­di­date was qual­i­fied, and while in the process of that I was giv­en a doc­u­ment in­di­cat­ing that the per­son was a uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate.

Didn't that sort of throw you off your pre­sen­ta­tion?

I did feel some dis­com­fort be­cause I al­ways like to pre­pare my­self when I am go­ing to speak in the Par­lia­ment, so it did catch me un­awares and I read it. So, at that time there was some el­e­ment of dis­com­fort. Oth­er emo­tions came to the fore when I sub­se­quent­ly found out that what I had said was not en­tire­ly true, which I did apol­o­gise for.

I don't think we need to dwell too much on that mat­ter but some po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors have opined that this would come back to haunt the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion at the next gen­er­al elec­tion. Do you share that view?

Well those who are sea­soned politi­cians would be able to throw bet­ter light on that. I al­ways say I am a sol­dier in­volved in pol­i­tics. (Smiles)

What about the per­cep­tion that the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the PP regime has been cast in doubt over this af­fair?

Not by one sim­ple...well not sim­ple, but not on one in­ci­dent. You have to recog­nise that de­trac­tors would grab any­thing and at­tempt to make a moun­tain out of a mole hill, while not at­tempt­ing to recog­nise the great work that this Gov­ern­ment has done in a mere 16 months, some which were left in abeyance for years.

What are some of these great things achieved un­der your port­fo­lio?

I recog­nise crime is the biggest prob­lem fac­ing the coun­try, and we have been able to re­duce some of the ar­eas of se­ri­ous crim­i­nal­i­ty such as homi­cides, rapes, shoot­ing with in­tent and so on.

Yet we are still hear­ing some bru­tal acts of vi­o­lence and on­ly last night two men were gunned down in the Mara­cas (St Joseph) area?

One mur­der is too many. We know we can­not erad­i­cate crime but I am say­ing that for the short pe­ri­od we have been in of­fice, we have done tremen­dous work in the area of com­bat­ing the crime surge. Yes, I have a mil­i­tary back­ground and some peo­ple prob­a­bly felt I would have come in­to this of­fice with an iron fist and deal with cer­tain mat­ters in a par­tic­u­lar way...you know what I mean?

You need the sup­pres­sion but you al­so need the mul­ti-pronged ap­proach which in­cludes two very im­por­tant as­pects-pre­ven­tive and the in­ter­ven­tion-and here is where my thrust is to­wards the youths. This is why we came up with the men­tor­ship pro­gramme and so many oth­er so­cial pro­grammes geared specif­i­cal­ly to rope in the young and vul­ner­a­ble adults in­to pro­duc­tive pur­suits.

What is the ra­tio­nale be­hind these pro­grammes?

My ar­gu­ment is very sim­ple: You deal with sup­pres­sion but if we do not put a damper on that con­duit that leads in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, that lead in­to the gangs, the guys who go about ter­ror­is­ing peo­ple and things like that, you would just be skim­ming off the sur­face and, ac­cord­ing to Stal­in, all you would be achiev­ing is "more come, more come." That is why I have been go­ing in­to spe­cial­ly tar­get­ed ar­eas telling these young peo­ple: "Look, I come from here, I grew up here and in the old days we used to play sports, let's go back there..."

You spent your boy­hood days in one of these hot spot dis­tricts, Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain, to be ex­act. How were you able to ex­tri­cate your­self from that en­vi­ron­ment as many oth­er promi­nent cit­i­zens have al­so done...that you did not end up as an­oth­er bad boy?

(A broad smile) Very well, you have two as­pects to that ques­tion-one is when my par­ents re­alised I was lean­ing to­wards...like any young­ster, you know...your en­vi­ron­ment. They de­cid­ed to move out the area.

You had a tru­ant streak in your DNA?

On yeah, oh yeah. And the oth­er as­pect was that my par­ents were pray­ing peo­ple and I think that had some­thing to do with it, so they moved out the area and grad­u­al­ly I recog­nised this thing (tru­an­cy) does not make sense.

Did you ever re­ceive any cut tail (cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment)?

Oh yes. I could tell you about that. The great­est cut ar­se I got (laughs) was once when I was pitch­ing mar­bles on Tamarind Square and in the heat of the ex­cite­ment I said: "Whey de ar­se..." Un­for­tu­nate­ly that was over­heard by one of my moth­er's fe­male friends who prompt­ly drew her um­brel­la and gave me one whack on my shoul­der. I ran home with my friends, of course, laugh­ing at me. Two min­utes lat­er the woman ar­rived at my home and called out to moth­er: "Ol­ga, Ol­ga whey him? Whey him? If you hear the nas­ti­ness dat come out dat boy mouth."

My hor­ri­fied moth­er said: "What? You us­ing ob­scene lan­guage out there?" And the woman who we used to ad­dress as "Tantie" hit me two more blows with the um­brel­la...in my house. I am telling you that sto­ry to il­lus­trate the pe­ri­od when the vil­lage raised the child; when we all looked out for each oth­er, when dis­ci­plin­ing any child was a vol­un­tary un­der­tak­ing by re­spon­si­ble adults in the com­mu­ni­ty. My moth­er did not want to know whether I used ob­scene lan­guage or not. That was the kind of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it and co­he­sion which ex­ist­ed among par­ents at that time.

Mr Min­is­ter, when and how it start­ed to go all wrong? When did the mi­nor in­frac­tions among the youths grad­u­ate in­to the hor­ren­dous and vi­o­lent acts we are wit­ness­ing to­day?

(Eyes closed and head lift­ed to the ceil­ing) Oh yes. That is easy, that is easy. It start­ed go­ing wrong when nar­cotics were in­tro­duced to Trinidad and To­ba­go-the mar­i­jua­na, LSD, things like co­caine had not yet en­tered the pic­ture. When the mar­ket for co­caine be­gan to evolve, the drug push­ers, the il­le­gal guns came on the scene, too. I think that is where it start­ed.

Very well, Min­is­ter. Vi­o­lent crime as you are well aware, Sir, is fu­elled by the il­le­gal drug trade and Trinidad and To­ba­go is a ma­jor drug trans­ship­ment point. This trade in any coun­try is fa­cil­i­tat­ed by se­nior state per­son­nel par­tic­u­lar­ly in the mil­i­tary, po­lice, cus­toms and even cor­rupt gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. From your ex­treme­ly ad­van­ta­geous point, how fac­tu­al is this sce­nario in our case?

(Sip­ping unsweet­ened tea) Well, from day one you have heard that se­nior of­fi­cials were in­volved and every­body would tell you that they hear this and they hear that, but no one can point a fin­ger say­ing de­fin­i­tive­ly: "I have ev­i­dence to prove that this par­tic­u­lar per­son or per­sons are ac­tu­al­ly in­volved in this dead­ly trade." We al­so heard and even now we know that there are rogue el­e­ments in the po­lice ser­vice.

Do you know who these cops are?

Well, if I knew who they were I would cer­tain­ly do some­thing about it. I mean, you hear things and I am not the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer, but I have re­ferred such re­ports to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for fol­low up ac­tion.

Mr Min­is­ter, you must be aware of the red tape in­volved in the dis­ci­plin­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers?

Yes. That is why I love the mil­i­tary. And you saw how swift­ly er­rant sol­diers were re­cent­ly dealt with?

The pub­lic's con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice is not at the lev­el it should be and un­less rogue cops are dealt with, the crime sit­u­a­tion would not change at the rate cit­i­zens would want to see. What are you do­ing to en­sure these of­fi­cers are ex­pe­di­tious­ly dis­ci­plined?

I to­tal­ly agree with you and the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the po­lice and the mil­i­tary ser­vice dif­fer so, un­less you have air-tight ev­i­dence, and this is where the trained in­ves­ti­ga­tors of the po­lice ser­vice need to come in, and this is some­thing we have been speak­ing about.

Can't we amend the reg­u­la­tions to en­sure that swift dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dures are in train such as what ob­tains in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions like in the Unit­ed States, where an of­fi­cer com­mits an of­fence in the morn­ing and by the af­ter­noon jus­tice is met­ed out?

Of course we can, but as I said, the ev­i­dence has to be air tight and re­mem­ber the po­lice ser­vice is gov­erned by the pub­lic ser­vice. And that el­e­ment of trust by the pub­lic would not be re­stored if we do not get rid of those rogue el­e­ments in the ser­vice.

Don't you think, Sir, the time has come when you would have to look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting up a spe­cial unit de­signed to ex­clu­sive­ly weed out those bad eggs?

(Eye­brows crack­ing) That is some­thing that has been dis­cussed and in putting that unit to­geth­er you need to be ex­treme­ly care­ful be­cause those guys could be quite tact­ful. The hi­er­ar­chy of the po­lice ser­vice is best poised to do that and when we are able to take the in­for­ma­tion we have and pur­sue some of those of­fi­cers. And we need on­ly to get one, eh!

Mean­ing?

(Lean­ing back on his swiv­el chair) I was speak­ing to a po­lice of­fi­cial in Ja­maica re­cent­ly and I asked him about that same is­sue and he said: "Oh yeah, it is worse than what you all have there, but we got one at a se­nior lev­el who was suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed and sub­se­quent­ly there was a pro­nounced di­min­ish­ing of that kind of be­hav­iour in our po­lice ser­vice."

So it takes just one ex­am­ple to put a dent in that kind of be­hav­iour and it is go­ing to come, it is go­ing to hap­pen here.

Okay, Sir, let's turn to the most con­tentious sub­ject in our coun­try to­day...the state of emer­gency, of which you claimed own­er­ship?

(A heavy sigh) Well, it is not a mat­ter of own­er­ship. I can say that I rec­om­mend­ed to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil that I think it was time that we look at that based on what kind of in­tel­li­gence we had at the time and what we saw loom­ing. Some peo­ple say that we called the state of emer­gency to deal with sim­ple crime. I mean every­body is en­ti­tled to their own opin­ion but...

That it was de­clared sim­ply to lock up poor, young black men?

(An­gry ex­pres­sion as he pulls up on his chair clos­er to the ta­ble's edge) Oh, non­sense! Ut­ter non­sense! And you now it irks me when I hear these kind of re­marks. Clevon, tell me the peo­ple you see be­ing ar­rest­ed for se­ri­ous crim­i­nal acts such as mur­ders? Usu­al­ly they are peo­ple look­ing like me, those ly­ing dead in the drains wear­ing three-quar­ter pants, they look like me. The moth­ers, sis­ters, broth­ers you see and hear cry­ing on the news me­dia al­most on a dai­ly ba­sis, they look like you and me. And that is the grim re­al­i­ty.

What is in­flu­enc­ing this ne­far­i­ous at­ti­tude and be­hav­iour?

The so-called role mod­els they are look­ing up to, the gang, ten chains, dri­ving fan­cy cars, two chicks on his arms and he would tell you: "Well, I did not go to high school." So the im­pres­sion­able young­sters hear­ing and see­ing those things feel they can adopt the same at­ti­tude-"Well I don't have to go to school, too." Most of them don't read the news­pa­pers, look at the news so they don't know what kind of ser­vices are out there to guide them on the right path.

What are some of the pro­grammes avail­able to these youths and how can they be ac­cessed?

We have in­side and out of schools; out of schools you have the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps, MY­LAT, MY­PAT, the cen­tres of which are reg­u­lar­ly list­ed in the news­pa­per, is­land­wide re­cruit­ment and they tar­get chal­lenged young­sters.

Get­ting back to the state of emer­gency, the crit­ics are say­ing it has not achieved what it was de­signed to and what is hap­pen­ing now is nor­mal po­lice work?

(In­cred­u­lous ex­pres­sion) As much as it has been crit­i­cised there are many, many more voic­es who are thank­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for this state of emer­gency. Some are say­ing that since the ini­tial ob­jec­tive has been served then call it off. That might be so, but you must re­mem­ber that in­tel­li­gence is con­sid­ered clas­si­fied for a pe­ri­od and in my es­ti­ma­tion and those of the pro­fes­sion­als who work with us at present, while the ini­tial threat has been cur­tailed there is still the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ac­tiv­i­ties that may not be the nor­mal crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

It is al­so be­ing said that since that has been avert­ed the state of emer­gency should be ter­mi­nat­ed?

(Slight­ly thump­ing the ta­ble) How they know that? How they know that? On­ly if they had the in­for­ma­tion that I have and if they have the in­for­ma­tion that I have, they would not be say­ing what they are say­ing (grim coun­te­nance).

I don't want you to com­pro­mise your in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing ap­pa­ra­tus, but hasn't that ini­tial threat been avert­ed?

The ini­tial threat has been avert­ed but then you nev­er know what is out there, who would want to dis­rupt, what their plans are. But based on what has hap­pened over the past 45 days or so we have been able to dis­rupt some of the or­gan­ised ac­tiv­i­ty be­cause we adopt­ed this route.

On an­oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ter, clear­ly the Gov­ern­ment has been em­bar­rassed by the re­lease of these peo­ple held un­der the an­ti-gang mea­sure?

I don't agree with you that the Gov­ern­ment has been em­bar­rassed. For ex­am­ple, look at the ex­pe­ri­ence in Ja­maica when they im­posed a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency in the Dudus af­fair. They held more than 4,000 peo­ple and on­ly 18 were charged.

Sir, is the fear of the crim­i­nals com­ing out with a vengeance at the end of the state of emer­gency re­al or imag­ined?

It is a re­al fear and here is where our law en­force­ment per­son­nel would kick in to­geth­er with the pre­ven­tive as­pect of it. They must keep up the fight be­cause those who feel that is the way to go must be stopped in their tracks.

So one can hope that the min­istry's se­cu­ri­ty net­work would use this pe­ri­od to beef up their in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty to meet any such even­tu­al­i­ty when the state of emer­gency has been lift­ed?

(A very con­fi­dent ex­pres­sion) Clevon, I have to watch you, you are prob­a­bly lis­ten­ing on one of our meet­ings some­where (loud laugh­ter). You are right. (Chuck­ling). Def­i­nite­ly there is need to do that among oth­er things to en­sure that where we left in Au­gust 21, when­ev­er this state of emer­gency is lift­ed, that we are in a dif­fer­ent, to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment where crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is con­cerned and to do that our law en­force­ment per­son­nel have been work­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly well dur­ing the past 45 to 50 days.

Fi­nal­ly sir, can we the cit­i­zens say three months, five months, six months from now that the state of emer­gency was worth it?

(Somber tone) Five months, six months, a year, two years, six years down the road, yes they would say so. I have every con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of our se­cu­ri­ty forces to do the nec­es­sary job to re­turn this coun­try to a place of peace and se­cu­ri­ty.